Innocent Sin
by Laryna6
Summary: The Minime Fic. RMX2 clone scenario AU. Something watches over fools and children. Sigma got more than he bargained for and a reploid born yesterday may hold the key to immunity, but what else sleeps in Zero's mysterious systems?
1. Chapter 1

_Note: The description of this in the notebook is Mini-Meverse. That sums it up. Starts from the scenario in X2 where X fights a Zero clone built by Sigma if the player is better than I would be at that game (otherwise it's the actual Zero until he snaps out of it) & wanders off into the middle of nowhere. I let this fic write itself and the bunny had a sucky sense of direction compared to the Feralverse bunny. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman, Megaman, or any of the copyrighted people, names, or concepts involved. _

_I revised the format on 6/24/10: No new content unless you want to read philosophical rambling A/Ns, I just finally managed to get around to dividing this into chapters. I'll be trying to do that to Irregularity soon too. _

_I shall also mention that no, the Zero clone is not going to act like a normal human child. Not exactly. This is because he isn't human. However, there are a lot of things about the behavior of human children that are that way for very good reasons. _

* * *

Zero had always complained about X's 'saintliness,' all throughout training.

X didn't like dirty tricks? Too bad. Dying's worse, and damn it, keep an eye out! They're not going to have your damn morals! X didn't have a suspicious bone in his body.

Watch your back!

It wasn't just that X had a hard time with the concept of someone actually wanting to kill someone else and therefore not giving them a chance to surrender but taking them by surprise. It was what constantly had Zero saying, "Hello? Earth to X!"

It wasn't an issue in training. That was something he wanted to concentrate on, to get good at it and not have Zero thinking that he wasn't doing a good enough trainer and trying to foist X off on someone else yet again. He didn't like having to learn to fight, but he had decided to do it and he would.

It was an issue in combat.

X did not want to be there. He did not want it to be real. He wanted it over with, and he focused on the objective to the exclusion of everything else, even his own safety. He wouldn't gamble with the safety of others, but his own? He kept going no matter how badly he was injured or how bad the odds. It simply did not matter to him.

Zero called it denial, and perhaps it was. X did not want this to be happening, did not want it to be real. So he focused on the task of making it stop being real as soon as possible.

The itch of healing injuries, the ache of accumulated strain on the barrel from so much buster use, the fact that it wasn't just dirt that stained the armor Dr. Light had given him: he hated them. So he would ignore them until they, and the war that caused them, went away.

Zero had always said he would get himself killed, staying in that dream world and ignoring the physical. Zero was the one who died in X's place, in the end. So X would do what he had to in order to bring Zero back.

Zero, his teacher, the person who meant the most to him after Dr. Cain.

Zero, a maverick under Sigma's control? No, X knew, as he met the reploid's eyes. Not Zero. Not a maverick either. He was pretending to be one, but those weren't the eyes of a murderer. There was a newbuilt child there, on the verge of panic, utterly terrified of Sigma's madness and begging for help. X's heart went out to him.

X had always been very empathetic: he cared about other people so their sadness made him sad, their happiness made him smile. This, though, was different. He was literally feeling the child's emotions, and the child knew what X felt. X wasn't frightened, the child didn't want to hurt him despite what Sigma wanted. It's alright, X assured the child. I'll take care of you. Everything's going to be okay.

X enfolded the child with caring as naturally as he would have taken him into his arms if he was in reach and they weren't in deadly danger.

The child was so utterly grateful: joy, relief, trust, love… was this what a human child felt for their mother? He disconnected the link to avoid distracting X and ran to him, letting X push him behind his own body for cover.

By the time Zero arrived, Sigma had retreated to try to figure out what had gone wrong and X was about to collapse from the stress of trying to save the world with someone born yesterday in tow. He had data on how to fight, but no experience, so he could handle basic mechanaloids but if he ran into a real maverick he'd… panic, but it wouldn't make any difference to the outcome anyway.

The long-awaited reunion consisted of Zero charging in, charging his buster, yelling that that wasn't him, it was an evil clone, and that X should get away from it, followed by X telling him he knew, the child wasn't evil, and thank goodness Zero was here! And alive, of course.

The child was dumped on Zero, since he should actually be helpful in handling the generators, and X went to go find Sigma after they managed to calm down the child, who needed a name but didn't have one of his own and there wasn't time.

Zero didn't seem to notice any strange feelings, and again there wasn't time to bring it up. The child did reach out to X for a second, but only after it was clear there wasn't going to be a fight with Zero. He just wanted a little comfort and reassurance.

The child could talk, of course, but with the fate of the world at stake there wasn't really time for conversations either verbal or emotional.

Once it was all over, X kept the child with him until Cain could verify that he didn't have the virus and wasn't a walking bomb or anything. Just an extremely rushed and much lower quality copy of Zero. Zero was a weird reploid in the first place, but a good kind of weird since he was immune.

The like-Zero part reminded everyone of the bad side of Zero's weirdness, and Cain reassured them that the child showed no signs of ever developing the cascading program errors, infinite loops, and other general thought-process-frying things that had caused Zero to turn into the berserk killing machine the hunters had first encountered. This meant, since Sigma had claimed the child had been infected with the virus and the child appeared to have fought it off, that it was possible to duplicate whatever caused Zero's immunity. Not only that, but to do it by accident, since why would Sigma have wanted to build an immune reploid?

This made everyone very excited.

At that point, debriefing the child in detail became an even higher priority than doing so to X and Zero, and since the child became very obviously on the verge of a panic attack when faced with crowds of strangers eyeing it lustfully without X to hide behind, they decided to have just one session and get the three of them at the same time.

When they got up to the part where the two of them had met, X gave his version first. "When I saw him," X nodded to indicate the child and rephrased what he was about to say. Having a dictionary installed didn't compensate for not having any practice with language. Normally he tried to be precise in briefings, but the largest issue here was the child. They needed information from him and confusing him would make that harder, so X would have to not just avoid big words that the child would have to stop to look up but boil the concepts down to the most basic level.

What he would have said if his opponent had actually been a maverick was something alone the lines of, "I looked at the eyes first, since that's where humans look to try to gauge mental state so seeing what he wanted me to see in them, at least, would have given me a lot of information on how much of Zero's personality was still present in the maverick. He was trying to use the 'rar, I eat babies!' psychological warfare expression, and I knew it couldn't be Zero because he always made fun of that and would have known better than to try it on me."

X decided to just leave all of that out, since he didn't know if the child even had the meanings of human facial expressions in his database. The KISS principle clearly applied to this situation, so X kept to the reploid equivalent of baby talk and restrained the urge to be technical or describe the more complex aspects of the psychological level of the situation. "He was so terrified of Sigma, and what Sigma would do if he found out he wasn't a maverick. He knew I was Sigma's enemy and so he was asking for help. I'm," X paused to think of a way to put it. "Rather soft-hearted, so it took me awhile to realize it wasn't me just empathizing with what a horrible situation he was in, it was as if I was feeling exactly what he was. It didn't click until he seemed to have understood that I would help him and I felt how relieved he was. Then I held Sigma off until he left and tried to resume my mission."

"Are you still feeling that now?" Dr. Cain asked, intrigued.

"There was another flash, after we encountered Zero. He wanted to make sure that it was safe to go with him." X turned to the child. "Were there other times that I didn't notice? I'm prone to strong emotions and it would have been easy for me not to tell."

The child shook his head. "Just those two, and Sigma before." He shivered and hid himself against X again.

"You felt what Sigma felt? No wonder you're so scared of him." X held him and tried to calm him down.

"He was there when I woke up, so I thought, but he…" the child gulped, still shivering. "He was broken, and hate, and killing, and sick, and wrong, and he wanted to do that to me and I was so scared!" The last few words came out in a wail.

"So you pretended to be a maverick?" X squeezed him slightly.

"Yes." The child nodded. "And he said you were his enemy, so I thought maybe, I was scared if you were like him. But you weren't." Gripping X hard, the child nuzzled his shoulder.

"And since he scared you you didn't try it with anyone else?" X squeezed him again. Most reploids didn't do so much physical contact in public: humans were fragile and most reploid children tended to go straight to work instead of having a real childhood, something that X found tragic. He and Cain had hoped to have adoption become more widespread than it was now, but then the virus happened. Still, a child was a child, and X would take care of this one: he'd promised.

"It's hard, too. I can't do it and pay attention to other things like moving at the same time, and I didn't want to distract you or be in the way even more than I was. I tried to say hello to Zero, since he said he was your friend and he didn't know if I was like Sigma or not, but he didn't hear me. And you were worried that other people might be afraid if I did it without asking first the second time, so I haven't." Was that right? That question wasn't something X needed the child's ability to understand, so he squeezed him again in answer.

"I didn't hear you?" Zero glanced at X. He was displeased he hadn't been informed of this at the time.

X shrugged, it hadn't been like there was time.

"Um. You're," the child paused to think. "Big, and empty because the you-you part is barricaded in a little part of it. You didn't hear me calling, and I think that if I had tried to touch if would have hurt."

"What am I like?" X wondered a lot.

The child smiled brightly. "Big, and bright, and it's a little scary at first but it's warm instead of hot. Soft and nice. Very strong. You could hurt, but you're really careful not to unless they're like Sigma. He was trying to grab you, but you just burned his hands off."

"Burned his hands?" Notes were being taken throughout the room.

"Sigma… grabs people. It's all dark and grabby. Shadows and broken glass. If he catches you, he'll break you and make you like him," the child warned them. "He only cut me when I reached out. After that I just ran away and since he couldn't find me he thought he'd killed me. It really hurt, but I had to stay away from so him I did." Was X proud of him?

X was.

"Could you do what Sigma does?" Zero's paranoia was not helping.

Revulsion at the idea of being anything like Sigma showed clearly on the face that was so like Zero's own, and X was amazed at the desperate and fanatical effort this child to whom emotions were not something hidden must have needed to hide his resistance from Sigma. "No. Sigma isn't a person. The broken glass bits used to be, but it isn't. If a person tried to do that, they would feel what the person they were doing it to felt. If I did what Sigma did to me to someone I'd be really hurt to, and if I broke someone I'd break." And deserve it. Shivering again, the child told X, "It was trying to make me into different glass bits to carve people up with, I think. Only I'm not sure why it wanted me. The person those were from were strong before it broke him. I'm not. So I hid and it thought it had killed me and was really mad at itself for the waste."

"Could you hide again now that Sigma knows you can do that and won't give up?" X wasn't only worried for the child, but also immunity wasn't if the virus could adapt.

The child's brow creased in thought. "I'm small and I have space to dodge in, so unless I got my body caught and he could flood into me, I'll be fine, I think. I'll have to grow strong before I can grow big."

"What do you mean by strong and big?"

"Strong is knowing who you are and not being easy to push into changing. Big is having a lot of things you think about or are. And there is how much space you have, too. You're practically overflowing," X was told. "It looks uncomfortable, but not in a way I can feel."

"So Zero has a lot of space to grow into, but he's very focused, so he's strong in the area he occupies?"

Exactly. "There are walls he stays in. I don't think you put them there, Zero, but you've made them really strong. It's like fire. Really hot, but not very bright."

"The programs I installed?" Dr. Cain asked, but the child clearly had no idea what he was talking about. "That's all right. Do you know if you can do this with humans?"

The child looked at him, tilting his head to see if that would help. "There's, you're there, but I can't figure out how to, maybe the word is translate? There's sort of something like static that I can't get to make any sense."

Dr. Cain blinked. "Next time, please ask first."

"Are you all right?" The various notetakers were worried.

"I felt absolutely nothing, which tallies with Zero not being aware either. It seems 'contact' has to be made for the telempathy to work."

"I can look without connecting now that I've figured out how, but that's just sort of what kind of person they are, not what they're feeling." The child thought something was odd as it looked at the other reploids present.

"What is it?" X was, typically, the first to notice.

"They're all spread out. That's bad," he warned them. "It makes you easy to catch and hurt. If you're looking into what to what to grow into instead of getting strong now, you can't fight him." He shook his head. "It doesn't help that you have less space than me even. You'd better be really careful." The fear of what would happen to them if they weren't was plain.

"How does space work? You think you have a small amount?" More notes were taken.

"Zero has tons. X has a few times more than me. Sigma doesn't have any, it just takes over other people's spaces. These people have about half to two thirds the amount I do. He has the most." The indicated reploid was surprised to be singled out.

"Intelligence? Processing power? Range of abilities? Adaptability?" Dr. Cain made various suggestions as he tried to think of what the child was talking about.

"Maybe processing power? It's how many things you can think of at once. I don't think that's all of it, though."

"I have more processing power than X? That can't be right." Zero shook his head.

"I think it's how many things you can be at once, or, hmm." The child hadn't even been paying attention to Zero's comment.

"I have no idea what most of your systems do, Zero. Apparently telempathic capabilities are among those hidden talents," Cain pointed out dryly.

Zero stared. Apparently he hadn't made the connection. This was his clone, after all.

"He's like me?" The child hadn't realized that either. "He looks like me outside, but he's very different. I can't tell how because he's hiding."

"Could you try touching him now that he knows it will be you?" X looked at them both carefully.

The child gulped. "Okay. Can you help me get better if I get hurt, please? Like you healed me from what Sigma did?"

"I don't know what I did, but I'll try to help you. Don't do it if you think it's dangerous, I don't want you to get hurt."

Smiling brightly, the child assured him, "I'll be okay." Thanks to you.

When X looked at him, Zero shrugged. "I'm ready, for what it's worth since I have no idea what's going to happen."

"Just try not to be paranoid, Zero. Ready? One, two, three."

In the next instant, nothing the onlookers could detect happened. Two more passed as the two mirror images looked at each other.

Then pain, no agony, on the younger's face, before he fell unconscious.

Zero displayed battle readiness, realization, concern. "Damn it!" X, watching Zero's face after he spoke, could see him reach back, it now coming as naturally to him as to the child, who stirred in X's arms. Zero relaxed. "Phew."

"Are you alright?" X held the awakening child gently and let the child climb into his mental arms as well.

"Yes. It hurt less than Sigma did," the child assured Zero. "You didn't mean to tear and break, just to burn away, and I'm not dark like it is so it was just the strength that hurt. I'm fine now." He pulled back from X's mind. "Just really, really tired. I don't think I could do that again today. Thank you though, X!"

"You are welcome. That was very brave." Another squeeze, and X missed him when he went away.

"Can I go to sleep now?" Will you watch over me?

"I'll let you share my room tonight, and we'll find you your own in the morning." Looking up after that, X made it clear the child had done more than enough today, thank you.

Lying against him, the child entered sleep mode easily.

Zero looked around the room, blinking to reset his optics in hopes that would make the input start making sense. "This is really weird. I can see him-man, he's tiny-and X, but no one else. I just can't make myself look at you. Weird." Zero shivered, but not with fear like the child had. "He said I was hot, so why do I feel like I'm freezing? How do you turn this thing off?" Everyone looked at Dr. Cain, who frowned.

"I'll see what I can do. At least I have a baseline for your systems, so I might be able to tell what is different and work from there." As he regarded Zero his worry grew. "How long do you think you can tolerate this?"

"If it gets too bad I'll just sleep until you can get to work on fixing me up. I think I'll need to get a handle on this. It explains a lot." Nodding thoughtfully, Zero continued, "I thought I was being superstitious or something, but maybe I was right about mavericks giving off what Starry called 'wiggy vibes.'"

"What do you mean?" X was puzzled.

"I sometimes have this feeling that something is, I don't know. It's sort of a paranoia? That someone is watching you feeling? Or that feeling when you know there's something you need to be doing and you don't know what it is, that kind of knowing but not knowing. Or when you're angry but not at anything you can point to? Edgy? Wanting a target? It's a weird feeling, but I tend to get it a lot when there are mavericks around. It's subtle, so I don't always notice it, and I had it around Sigma and the rest of them for ages before we found out about the virus so I got in the habit of tuning it out. I rarely get a false positive, though. Just one time, and I'm not sure if that was a miscall or there was a maverick and they chose not to attack." Zero waggled his hand: could go either way.

"Why didn't you mention this before?" The questioner this time was one of the random debriefers.

"I thought I was just developing good instincts, or something. What was I supposed to say? My maverick senses are tingling?" Zero paused. "Okay, I'm turning my internal heaters down. At this rate, I'll set fire to the couch." X had been feeling a little warm. "I am not in an Antarctic blizzard, damn it!"

"Zero?" Are you alright?

"It's just the kid was right. It is cold and empty in here. Not that you would know. Has anyone ever told you that you have a sunny disposition? Understatement. You're a freaking quasar." Zero looked almost hungry, though he was trying to repress the feeling.

"Do you think it would be a good idea for you to see if you can link to me?" It looked like he could use it.

"X, right now I am finding the amount I want to do that right this instant a little worrying. What did Dr. Light make you out of anyway, an alloy of sweetness and nice with an engine powered by pure distilled optimism? If I were human I could get diabetes just looking at you."

"He said that I was healing him." The sleeping child looked so happy now, after all the recent pain.

"More like giving him the energy, though that's maybe not exactly it, to heal himself. He's absorbing it now, but it was a lot more when you were connected. This is just what everyone gets, only he can sense it, which makes it do more. I was not kidding when I said you were like a sun." Scanning the room again, Zero nodded thoughtfully. "I can tell where they are by where it's being soaked up, but I still can't see them any better than before, or anything they're putting out. I do not like this feeling." In the sense of he did not like signs of a possible maverick attack. Seeing the reaction, he waved it off. "It's not you, it's me. I'm not letting myself look. I decide to do it and then it's like I jerk back. The kid I can see fine, and X is hard to miss, but it's like my subconscious-and I know reploids aren't supposed to have one, but I have tons of stuff in my processor I don't know about-is damn sure that it's all going to end badly."

"The fault of the virus?" That was Cain's theory.

"Probably," Zero agreed. "Oh, that's why I'm cold! It's not supposed to be this empty. There's supposed to be a healthy level, like a healthy level of heat, and what I'm letting myself sense is so far below it it's not funny. I'm cold, and out in the open, and it is not nice."

"I'll get to work on it." Tapping on keys joined the background noise as Dr. Cain started calling up Zero's medical records.

"X, do not beam at me." Zero's voice was flat. "I appreciate the thought, but it is like offering death by chocolate to someone on a diet. Stop wishing I would let you help and being so damn willing to and worried about me."

"Why are you sure it's a bad idea?" Restraining the desire to help his friend was a herculean effort, but if it would help…

"Because it seems like such a good one. I do not know if these instincts are trustworthy and I am not experimenting with them on you." Turning resolutely away from X, Zero asked Dr. Cain, "When do you want me in the lab?"

"I'm old, it's been a trying few days, and I need my rest. Let's make it nine thirty."

Zero nodded. "I'll set my alarm for nine fifteen. Anything I should bring?"

"I just put you back together, so I had to get all your records together for that."

"Sorry about the hassle, Doc."

"A useful hassle is not a hassle."

With that, it was clear the session was over. Since they were in a conference room in the medical area, it was a simple matter to get one of the wheeled stands used for transporting unconscious but uninjured reploids. X strapped the child, who really needed a name and a new paintjob, into it and headed for his quarters. In the two minutes that took Zero left.

When he got home X put the child into the recharge capsule and took the bed. The child needed the recharge: X needed a good night's sleep after running on energy refills for so long. The luxury of an inefficient bed was one of the things that told him peace was restored. When every second counted you longed for the freedom to waste time.

X was taking off his armor and putting it into the closet to be stored away later (Dr. Light's armors only lasted a short time: he hadn't wanted X to feel compelled to use them) when he felt it. Not it, Zero. He was so alone, having a nightmare. X felt a little like a human parent whose child had knocked on their bedroom door wanting to climb into bed with them because they were too scared to sleep alone. Although Zero was far better than X at keeping the bad things away. Still, it was Zero, so of course X was fine with letting him in. Zero would probably be angry with himself for imposing if he remembered this when he woke up, but he very clearly needed it right now. So X tucked them both in. Anyone would be feeling bad after coming back to life in the middle of another war, forget having a new and uncomfortable sense to deal with. X owed Zero his life and this was something he would be fine with giving to anyone who needed it. X liked taking care of people.

How was the child, by the way? X wished he could check. Zero felt that and pulled the kid in, which was appreciated, before falling more deeply asleep. Little happy child who felt safe with them.

X slept with a smile on his face.


	2. Chapter 2

Having made very sure he would not be needed before noon, X was worried when he was startled awake when his internal timer said it was only a few seconds after nine fifteen. What was the emergency?

Zero was freaking out because he couldn't disconnect from X and the child was fluttering around in a tizzy with no idea what to do about his other parental figure being so upset. X was a little sharp, for X anyway, which consisted of saying that this wasn't good, and told Zero to calm down, stop worrying the baby, and meet them at Dr. Cain's.

He then proceeded to reassure the child that Zero was not angry at X and the child had certainly not destroyed their friendship by accident. Then he got dressed in his normal armor, finally found something large enough for the child to wear since his armor was dinged up and civilian clothes would help distinguish him from Zero, and headed for the lab, comming ahead to tell Dr. Cain when they would arrive.

"No, that's not it! Still, I can't shut it down!" Zero was exclaiming at Dr. Cain frantically when they walked in. "I can limit the intensity, but since he wants me there and it's so damn nice that most of me is holding on with both fists, I can't convince myself to pry myself loose!" He was pacing across the room and back, full of the need to do something about this but unable to figure out what. "Damn it! Sleep just made the sensitivity worse since I had less other input to focus on, and my higher brain functions being off let automatic systems be authorized to deal with easily solved problems. Now we have a major problem." He made a calming gesture at the child over his shoulder. "X was right, I'm not angry at you, I'm angry at myself for losing control like this."

"The only difference I can detect is that you're accepting data on the conscious level from a mostly inactive transmitter/receptor function. I have their results from when they came in yesterday, and I'll scan them again right now." Once this was accomplished, X helping the child with the scanner again, Dr. Cain and X went over the results.

This was one of those many times that the inability to fully scan X became truly annoying. The child was easier. "He's got full control over that function, but it works nowhere near as well, mostly due to the fact he has little processing power assigned to it. He has to divert extra to do anything with it, but has no problem with being passive in a link. Is that right?"

"I don't mind this. It's very nice." More than nice. The child loved this. Without the helmet keeping his hair in Zero's trademark ponytail he looked even younger. The one-size-fits-all t-shirt X had been given at a concert he'd attended featuring twentieth century music that had recently been rediscovered looked like it had been fingerpainted on, which didn't help matters either. At least the child, and Zero, were thin enough X's pants fit, although it looked like the child had recently had a growth spurt. Blue jeans were very non-Zero.

"The kid is sunbathing while we adults are tearing our hair out. Kids these days." Zero made sure the still-nameless kid knew he was just making a joke.

"X is using a little more processing power than usual, but he's so efficient at using his large systems I doubt it will have any effect whatsoever. No virus in any of you, nothing except one amazingly secure data link. I have absolutely no idea what frequencies this is using. If it is at all. This worked through HQ's walls, which contain a very thick layer of lead. I don't even know if it's possible to block it unless I can figure out how it works." Looking up at them Cain asked, "Zero, are you sure you can disconnect if it becomes a problem?"

"Sure." Not an issue. "So how do we make it enough of a problem that I'll be able to disconnect?"

"I have no idea."

"Great." Zero turned to them. "What do we do?"

"The child needs a name and a makeover."

Zero had been hoping for something along the lines of a plan, but a distraction would do if there wasn't one. "Great. Let's head over to Douglass'. Clothes later, safety first. I'm training the kid, X. You're too soft, and I did a good job with you, didn't I?"

So they headed out. "Mini Me?" was Zero's first suggestion.

"He's taller than I am." No. " He does look like you. I think if we could find a name that both hinted at that and described who he is as himself as distinct from you that would be good. Because," X explained to the child, "Unless you decide you want a very serious redesign, people are going to look at you and think of Zero, and it would be helpful to make it clear from the introduction that you are similar but at the same time your own unique person. What do you think?"

"That sounds good." The child bowed to his experience.

"One?" The main things Zero cared about were armor, training, and the practical aspects of keeping the kid alive, but he was perfectly willing to help brainstorm.

"That would be a very good 'one!' It's the number that comes after Zero, but it's almost the opposite of it. Zero means nothing while one is a very definite something. There is one of you, not two Zeroes. We all seem to like it, but let's keep thinking in case we come up with something better. I was thinking of looking at my thesaurus for words like 'null' that mean something similar to Zero and starting from there, but I don't know about that now."

"It just seemed like an obvious choice. It's not like I put much thought into it." Shrugging, Zero dismissed X's praise for his idea.

"Obvious is good."

"I'd like if we could use One for now." The child's suggestion was slightly timid, but his, One's, hunger for a name and identity was clear.

"Okay, One. That's fine. Just keep in mind that you can change it anytime you want to. Dr. Light expected me to change mine. He just called me X so I would have a name, but X is to names what Zero is to numbers. It's a placeholder. People who didn't know how to write would sign with X, so it's a name that can mean any name."

"So why didn't you change it?" One asked.

"Well," X thought for a moment before explaining that, "I got used to it, so it would be odd to hear something else now. People know me by it too, so to them it doesn't just mean the letter: they hear it and think of me. He thought I would grow out of it but it grew with me. Not to mention that it reminds me of him. It's nice that he put so much thought into it. It's very different from the names for robots, for example. They usually had functional names or musical ones. I like music, but he picked a name that embodied his hope that I could choose who I became. That means a lot. So I know you like this name because Zero and I are giving it to you, but I want to put some thought into it, because with gifts that's what counts."

"You have to get used to X, he always worries too much." Zero waved off X's concerns. "He, well, you know what he's like. He's so careful and considerate he agonizes about everything. It's just a name, X. You're not going to hurt him with it unless you went for something really stupid."

"You're going to put a lot of thought into what kind of armor he should use, right? Because that will be important to helping him protect himself? It has to be appropriate for his fighting style?"

"X, a name isn't ar-Okay, I get your point." If psychology played a role in virus resistance, they were going to have to start taking it more seriously. "X, it's one thing to say I told you so. This attitude that you being right is unremarkable is, is, the zen of arrogance. It makes everyone else feel stupid and immature." There was a brief pause as Zero felt X's reaction to this. "Yes, I know you don't want people to feel that way, and you admit it when you're wrong, the point is that you're a saint and it's making the rest of us look bad so no, don't stop it, just…" Zero looked at One for support.

"I like the way X is."

Zero threw up his hands. "Forget I said anything. You're too purehearted and you're too innocent to get it."

After taking Zero's advice, X realized something.

"What is it now, X?" My, Zero was grumpy.

"Zero and One! Binary!" Perfect!

Zero wondered what he had done to get himself stuck with two such happy, shiny people. If this was one of those old cartoons they'd have hearts in their eyes. Too freaking cute. He was going to have to corrupt the kid quick, or his adoration of X would have terrible consequences. Terrible.

To add insult to injury, X was being all, of course you don't mean that, and he did, damn it.

It was really hard to have an argument with people who genuinely care about your opinion and input, unless you were an utter jerk and it took one hell of a bastard to say untrue things just to hurt X.

How could you win against someone who thanked you genuinely for correcting them if they were wrong about something? X failing to grasp the concept of keeping score made Zero have the worrying feeling that he was losing.

And no, X, you can't give me your points so I can win if I want to. It doesn't work that way.

It was impossible to cut someone down to size if they didn't have any arrogance in the first place and X _should_ be really arrogant so people felt like there was a need to. Or something. Damn it, X, stop worrying about it!

"Having a rough day, Zero?" Douglass peered over the counter.

"One of my own logic processors thinks I'm a paranoid idiot who wants to cut my nose off to spite my face and my clone is in danger of turning into another X. I need armor and weaponry stat, best stuff you've got. We need to lure One here away from fluffy bunnies with things that go boom. Or slice. Oh, and Sigma'll probably be after him, so as top grade as you can get the budget for given that we're going to have to do some trial runs before finalizing the design."

"Can't we just use your armor as a stopgap?" Authorizing expensive drafts was hell.

"Douglass, I am a close combat specialist and one of the three best fighters on the face of the earth. One here was born the day before yesterday and his best strategy against a maverick would be to _run away."_ Are you nuts?

Yeah, he should have thought of that. Looking like Zero didn't mean he was Zero. "Standard training armor then, maybe?"

"No, run up the design for the old hacker subclass. The design's outdated as all hell, though, so I want something first class ready for emergencies yesterday. Run through whatever you want, I promise Cain'll sign off on it."

"Hacker?" Douglass looked it up. "It's on file. Man, you were right, this is outdated. I'll swap the alloy and…"

"No tweaks! Just have the machines crank it out and use that head time on the design for the draft. As soon as we get that armor we'll head over to the testing area and get some combat data to use for it." Zero made a cutting off motion.

"Zero…"

"Improve the design later, it's a good design and we need a new distance combat class. The kid's the problem now." And that was an order.

"Is he going to be joining the Hunters?" That was the big question. They _needed_ more immune people. That was the question in the eyes of all the people who stopped what they were doing to watch the three of them pass by in the halls.

"Douglass, given that he seems to be imprinting on X like a baby chick and I'm the one providing the closest he'll get to a voice of sanity, probably. Right now, though, he's our best clue to the secret of immunity and Sigma's..." Zero felt X's mental nudge and reworded what he was about to say to avoid scaring One even more. "Not happy about him switching sides instead of attacking X and wants him for some evil plot or another. I'll teach him to kick ass later: right now we're going to be focusing on surviving and evading capture, you got me?"

"Loud and clear. Punching it up now… man, Hacker class is customizable. Know what you want? I'll have to look up what some of these options are."

"Yeah, I'm a lot of the reason that class got shut down, so I was involved when they were trying to find a way to get around my security. Good thing too, since the mavericks eloped with the data on why hacker attacks didn't work on me as an irregular and now they don't work on anybody. He's not going to want any actual hacker gear, so select post-customization under 'rig,' that's for adding it later."

"That opens up another window."

"Put in all the pro-speed, health, and shield options you can in place of the gear. If you don't recognize it, assume you don't want it."

"Gotcha."

Zero signed. "The camo back then's useless now, so don't bother. Select the shield instead. Color… rookie green. Hard to confuse that with me on a battlefield. Though I hope like hell we won't have to use this scrap for real. Body type's the same as me, but he doesn't have all my fancy stuff, so don't assume something's there. That should do it for now. Get Cain's data on him and get to work. I'll get on combat data acquisition now. Oh, his name's One." Zero had never been good with the rules of politeness. "One, Douglass; Douglass, One."

One waved and Douglass smiled and waved back. "Nice to meet you."

Done with placating X, Zero resumed the important stuff. "Send it over to training area 6-1, I think. I'll start on unarmored even though, One, if you know what is good for you, you will not, under any circumstances, let me catch you out of your armor. I know X sleeps naked…"

"Zero! I do not sleep naked!" Outraged, X blushed furiously.

"You wear human clothing, so you might as well me." No more irrelevant interruptions! "One, you are _not_ letting him teach you his bad habits. Do I make myself clear!"

One nodded, blushing even more than X.

"I am not hearing an answer." Zero pointed to his ear.

"Yes, sir?" One attempted to guess the right response, and got it first try.

"Exactly." Zero nodded sharply. "In training, I am not your prototype, I am your commanding officer. You will do what I say or I will not be nice." Sensing an exchange, Zero elaborated. "No, I won't be mean just for the hell of it, but if you don't work hard and do what I tell you to you will die, or worse. So I will do whatever I have to in order to make sure you live. I am going to work you very hard. I made X come the closest to whining he ever has."

"Zero will make you work hard, and he won't settle for anything less than your best," X confirmed. Whining. Indeed. "So just do your best, and remember he's doing it because he wants you to stay safe, and you'll be fine."

"I will," One promised them both, relieved.

"Damn it, X, I was trying to intimidate him." Le sigh.

X was utterly unrepentant, leaving Zero to wonder why he even tried.

Douglass cleared his throat, something that was even more obviously an attempt to get someone's attention in a reploid. "Weaponry?"

"Standard buster. Period."

"But…" No cool toys?

"Douglass, the buster is built-in. He will always have it. That makes it far superior to anything that can be taken away, lost, or accidently left behind, as much as I adore the beam saber. He will master it, and then we can work on finding the ideal weapon for him and training him in it. But for now, it is not combat, it is survival. Standard buster." Period.

"I know the concept, Zero, it's just that it's Sigma after this kid, and I'd feel better if he had an ace in the hole." Douglass was a weapon and armor engineer: this was as basic as fitting the armor to the combatant's style.

"He has one…" Zero's voice trailed off. "If Sigma built him, he either doesn't have it or Sigma knows I have it. Damn. Yeah, he needs an ace, and I need a new ace. X, ask Cain about the Hydra Unit when you go see him, okay?" When X nodded, Zero turned back to Douglass. "Thanks for reminding me, but I'll work on this with Cain. It's not you, it's the virus."

"Yeah, I'm probably better off not knowing." What you didn't know they hopefully wouldn't try to infect you to find out.

"If it turns out he knows anyway, I'll tell you all about it. The Hydra's really freaking awesome. Sadly, it's also really freaking expensive to build and a pain in the ass to install. Since the kid's a rush job, he probably doesn't have it." Grimacing, Zero admitted that, "Yeah, I need to start thinking about alternatives right now. Damn it."

X wanted to ask, Zero assured him that he'd handle it. X accepted that, but would keep an extra eye on Zero since his combat readiness was potentially reduced. Zero was fine with that within reason. X assured him that he would be reasonable, and Zero's response was yeah, right.

One wanted to know if Zero would be okay and was reassured that Zero was competent and X was a very good mother hen.

"Is the Hydra's presence something Cain's scans should show already?" That was something that couldn't be asked via emotions. Zero's unique systems were scan-encrypted like X's were. Cain could scan his own designs along with most other modern ones very easily, but most of the information he got from Zero was via the copy of Cain's OS that had been installed in Zero when he was brought in. Actually, since Cain had spent years studying X, Zero was the least well understood reploid alive, as this whole thing demonstrated.

"I don't know what everything Cain did to the kid was, but probably. He managed to tell that One and I were both running the same one of those 'don't know what it does and no clue how it works' things. You know technical stuff makes my smile and nod autopilot activate. You were a happy lab rat: I was not."

"While they were trying to figure out your immunity?" X and Zero looked at each other and then at the clueless newbie. Man, they were getting younger and younger.

"No, that was pretty much in and out since people were dying and Cain's a good guy. Oh hell." Zero's whole body slumped. "They're going to want to run more tests now."

X patted Zero on the shoulder. "When he was brought in, there was some discussion of taking him apart since he wasn't sentient at that point. If Cain's replacement OS hadn't worked Zero wouldn't be here now. A lot of the hunters back then…" How to explain this to Douglass? "In the old days, deaths were rare, and Zero wiped out about two units just of Hunters. A lot of people died, and a lot of people wanted something done about it. Since we never managed to ID Zero's builder to press charges, they didn't have a deserving target." It was shameful how they had taken it out on Zero, but X still felt sympathy for their grief.

"Oh." Douglass was amazed. "I mean, I knew about that, but I didn't think of what they thought at the time. It's just so different now. Zero's a hero to all of us."

"There's been a lot of changeover." Despite the lack of old enmity, Zero wasn't happy about all the deaths. "I wake up and I know practically none of you. Sadly, units being wiped out isn't that rare now, but imagine if Sigma got cured? That's about how it was back then."

"Compared to Sigma, you did practically nothing!" The comparison was outrageous to Douglass.

"Yeah, but compared to the Irregulars before me I did one hell of a lot. Things were better then." Regret, nostalgia, various sorrows were dismissed with a shrug. Oh, wait. "Sigma ran off with all the experienced commanders and I died. Who's in command of the military side? I just woke up, got gear from you, got briefed by Dr. Cain, and headed out. Who am I supposed to report to?"

"Dr. Cain, or X I guess." Douglass shrugged. "It's been sort of scrambling here, and they're immune."

"X and Cain." What the hell were they thinking.

"We were working on identifying officer candidates," X explained, "but Sigma did a very good job both times identifying and killing or infecting anyone effective. As long as the virus keeps stealing all our good military commanders…" there was no way they could become an organized force again.

"You two have done a great job!" X and Dr. Cain had saved the world, after all. Douglass would hear nothing against them.

"By the skin of our teeth." X clearly wished he could confirm Douglass' faith in them, but it wasn't realistic. "Dr. Cain's a brilliant scientist, but he's not a strategist. I'm a good fighter, thanks to Dr. Light's designs and Zero's training, but I can't figure out the enemy's plans very well and in the end I'm only one person. All Sigma would have to do is get lucky once. That's why getting you back was so vital, Zero. Do you think you could command now? We really need you." Desperately.

There was so much hesitation in Zero's face. "It's clear I don't have to deal with being hated now, but that wasn't the only reason I refused command. I need to talk to Cain, and maybe all this will have sorted some of it out, and I might be the best we've got. I'm fine with training a new officer cadre. Command I'm not sure about. I mean, before I was the most likely to go nuts, and now I'm the least? Not to mention I've been dead for ages and need to play serious catch-up. Training sessions, sure. Really not sure about command."

"I'll talk with Dr. Cain. You might be even more valuable as a trainer than as a commander." X didn't know if the death toll would improve anytime soon, and he knew Zero's teachings would at least give the trainees the same fighting chance X had. Except that he was built by Dr. Light and they hadn't been. If only they knew the secrets of X's design.

"The armor set will be done in two hours," Douglass announced after a few seconds of silence. "I rushed it in the queue, but we've got a lot of new gear needed yesterday. Thank goodness no one ever got around to taking the templates out of the autoforge. Wait a minute, three hours?" Douglass peered at the screen as the time reset itself. "Oh, great timing for that model redesign to finally get processed! They have to shut the autoforge down for awhile to switch out the molds, and then do test runs… Wait, they do a test on every basic template, and hacker's still a basic… Hour and a half. Your set'll be part of the test run, One."

"That quick?" Zero was amazed. "I was expecting at least five hours. Can you let us into the armory, then? I want to show One some of the toys he could be getting if he does well in school."

"Sure, let me buzz you in. You should have a passcard for it, though."

"They gave X all my stuff and I'm no longer in the system. Nasty side effects of death."

"I'll get to work on that," X promised. "I think I'll go see Cain now, then. Com me if something I need to know about comes up."

"Sure. Bye, X."

"Goodbye." One waved hesitantly.

"Goodbye Zero, One. I'll come right away if you need me, so don't worry." X hugged One briefly. You're not abandoned, and we'll still be in touch.


	3. Chapter 3

"Ah, hello X." Cain's voice was weak when he greeted X. His debilitation made surgery difficult, but his mind was still sharp as ever, so he could direct a team or do research.

"Zero is worried Sigma might know about something called a Hydra unit, and does One have one? Also, now that I've been awake for awhile, the differences between One's capabilities and Zero's are amazing. I'd ask One about this, since it's more obvious to him, but their abilities are orders of magnitude apart." X might not have a degree, but he'd been Cain's partner in research and while he might not comprehend evil he was good at figuring out most everything else.

"'One' does not have a Hydra unit. I'm not surprised: Zero's is quite well camouflaged: the Purloined Letter Effect. I utterly missed it when we installed his OS and examined him when he was brought in, so I'm sure it's not in the data Sigma took with him. Given the condition Zero's parts were in when they arrived…" Cain typed a bit to pull up some records to examine them. "We found out because of a single clue: it was driving me batty trying to figure out why… I can't say for certain that Sigma doesn't know, but the odds are about zero. It's an incredible system." Dr. Cain was clearly eager to discuss this in detail, but it was private.

"Well, One needs an ace in the hole and Zero wants a backup surprise." X wasn't a surprise person. "Zero's getting hacker armor as a stopgap for One, but he wants a half-decent custom design as soon as possible. He's working with Douglass, but they could use your input and authorization."

"Hacker? Oh, brilliant. We needed him." Cain's notes were added to.

"He's eager to train," X continued, hitting the high points of everything Cain needed to know: they could discuss things in detail once they knew what was most urgent and Cain had all the information. "Since there's such a desperate need, but he really doesn't want to command. He said he'll talk to you about it. I don't think the medical issues are all of it, though. He has a real drive to look after and teach people but he dislikes giving orders outside of that scenario, unless it's an emergency." That was odd.

Cain agreed. "I suppose it's my OS's fault. There's so much about Zero that he can't access. It's the human condition, and it's bad enough for us. A reploid doesn't really have much idea of how to deal with it."

"He said his own logic processor was rejecting his arguments as invalid." Surely that wasn't normal?

Cain snorted. "Every hour of every day. This one woman, before I found you? She led me on. Horrible person. I found this out and I still couldn't stop loving her. I pined after her for months. I think I should find Zero a therapist."

"A therapist?" Had X heard right?

"There are some working on reploid issues. Since mentality appears to relate to virus resistance, we clearly need more of them. They have the skills to talk to someone and find out what's going on underneath the level they're aware of: I don't. If I can find someone I can work well with, we can help each other get pointed in the right direction." Cain's finger tapped on the side of the keyboard, trying to think of how to do this. "The trouble is that with all the deaths from the wars we're not the only ones in need of good therapists. Most of the good ones are knee deep in patients and reluctant to stop doing urgent work to get involved in something that has always been considered not their field. They are contributing where they are and don't think they can be of help here." Half-smiling, he added, "I need someone brilliant but not smart enough to realize how little they know. Do you know where I could find a time machine? I'd love to have my twenty-year-old self still be around."

They both laughed, remembering the beginnings of this. "If we could build a time machine… Paging Dr. Light?" More laughter followed X's response.

"Yes, I'd much rather it was him here than me."

X felt the same way about Megaman, although his famous brother had his own problems: it wasn't fair to want to give him X's as well. "Anyway," X went on when they calmed down, "One… that's what we named the clone, although I'm sure you've figured that out by now, is pretty amazed by what Zero can pull off." He'd covered the list: time to return to the first and most important item on it. "It takes him a lot of effort to keep a short-range link up for a few seconds. Zero connected to me and then to him _in his sleep_, and the issue isn't keeping it up despite the strain, it's a strain to not have it there. I think… Remember what he said about cold? There's a level of interaction on that level he perceives as healthy, and he hasn't been getting it. Until he can consciously access those settings to alter them, he's clinging to us for warmth. He's stop if he were hurting us, but he's not, so his survival programming, aware he's not in possession of the facts, is rejecting his arguments for disconnecting."

"You are fine with it, right?"

"Better than fine. One is overjoyed, frankly. Sigma really traumatized him: he's terribly afraid, and this reassures him that he's safe and cared for by people who can beat Sigma if he tries to kidnap him. You know how I am about helping people, too. I could put my foot down and that would enable Zero to pull out even if I wasn't able to actually kick him out, which I think I might be, but my opinion is that he's being paranoid about this. What we need to find out is exactly why he's so paranoid. The virus is involved, but what else?"

Cain tapped a few keys. "I need more data on how Zero perceives the virus, and this 'maverick radar' or whatever it is. One as well. Keeping them alive comes first, of course."

Of course.

Now Cain had to drop the other shoe. "Sigma might or might not be able to build another One."

Oh no.

Cain elaborated: "One was built with certain antique parts. Zero was entirely built with antiques, as you know. There aren't many 20XX parts left out there of these types, and I've been trying to get my hands on all the general parts I can to use in repairing Zero, although this resurrection has lowered my supply, so I know the market. One of the collectors I was in contact with died early on in this war. I don't know the extent of his collection, but some of One's serial numbers match the partial list of his collection he gave me when I explained what I needed old parts for. I've put out a call for as many parts as I can get my hands on and a warning that Sigma is interested in them, so hopefully a repeat of this theft can be prevented. The trouble is, I don't know the extent of the original theft: he just gave me single examples of each category."

"One said Sigma wanted him for something. Possibly a second virus?" That was the utter worst case scenario. "We need to get him a larger database. He's smart, but he's making up his own terminology and has no real idea how reploid systems or the virus work."

"I'm on it." Cain started to compose the order. "The good news, although not for them, is that some of the parts in One are, except for those in Zero, the only known surviving examples of their type. However, I have no idea how essential they are. One is less able to use this ability than Zero: enough to make an even more adulterated version useless to Sigma? Modern parts are far less efficient than antique parts, as you know."

"I hope so." Poor second One.

"He expected One to be fragile enough that killing him in a hit meant to do far less damage was possible, yet One was strong enough to evade the virus and Sigma himself. Admirable, but not good for this scenario. It makes the prospect of immunity more likely, though." The holy grail.

"One is getting stronger, I think. It's… get their opinions on this. Zero is helping a lot, though I'm not sure if he's aware of that beyond that he's trying to help. There's a lot of teaching by doing and other things that are very Zero, but I'm very sure he has no idea of the details he's showing One. Not to mention that being loved and having survived Sigma is making One more confident and that helps too. Secure? I think that concept is an important one." X tried to remember if there was anything else. "Oh, One has no real control on the link besides on or off. Zero can turn the volume down. It might just be that he's partially tuning it out, though. The communication… practice might be an element, and the fact that Zero and I know each other and recognize certain moods is a factor as well, but there was this one exchange that was almost a pseudo-conversation."

"Teaching." A single word that summed up Cain's thoughts.

X's expression echoed his. "I think you're on to something." X and Zero weren't the only ones who had worked together long enough to know how the other thought.

"When he came in this morning, he was worried about you. He mentioned that One was linked in, but as part of a rant about you worrying about him and Zero pulling him in while asleep to make you be quiet. The issue was the lack of control. Despite the fact that you can burn away the virus and have a mind like a quasar," a quasar was a galaxy-sized star, "while One is newbuilt, 'teeny-tiny' and fragile, Zero feels that this link is a purely good thing for One but potentially harmful for you. Not to mention that you, his former student, are the only one besides his new protégée that he allows himself to see." Here was the evidence: would X draw the same conclusions?

"Command over adults versus training people who don't know what they're doing yet." This tied in with X's own observations perfectly. "When he died, I was the rookie he had to commit suicide to save. This time, he was willing to take the child and handle backup while I faced Sigma alone. That was the right decision, since I had been there for so much that he missed and had experience he didn't. However, it's quite a contrast between this time and last time when he went ahead and didn't really want me there at all."

"If only it were that easy for human parents to recognize that their children were now adults." Despite the fact that X considered Cain his honorary father, they had really been partners. X had helped Cain figure out his systems and Cain had helped X figure out the world.

"Zero calls me a mother hen. He's worried about stuffing me back in the nest and stifling my development." It made sense now. "He's not telling One, 'don't worry, we'll protect you.' That's there, but the message is that 'I'll teach you and give you what you need to protect yourself.' He's very worried about One picking up my bad habits. It's not jealousy," X was quick to point out in Zero's defense. "It's just that One is his responsibility, and he wants to do the best job he can. He's fine with me helping, but he's aware I'm too, too…"

"Soft?" That had been Zero's constant refrain during X's training.

"Unparanoid." Trying to find a better word, hopefully one that actually existed, X examined Zero's feeling. "He might be right, sadly. I still think like a civilian. That's who I was and I want to go back to it. I need to start taking more precautions."

They didn't need a link to know they were sharing the same sorrow. They would restore peace one day. Time to change the subject to something hopeful. "Do you think Zero could improve others' mental defenses like you seemed to say he has been for One?"

"Hmm. One has a natural advantage and previous 'combat' experience, and I'm already immune, so we're not representative. Zero and I need to hunt down some mavericks and see what difference this makes. I think there's a chance I would notice the virus now that I've had experience with the feeling of something else in my mind. It's like breathing: always there on automatic, but you can put it under conscious control. I think that before I was deleting the virus before I registered it on the conscious level. It was something I didn't want in my head and I'm a reploid: If I don't like something there, I delete it. So I might acquire Zero's 'maverick sense,' or at least know when they're trying to infect me. With Zero, there should be a dramatic difference. I doubt that blindness will extend to potential threats." X didn't want to get Cain's hopes up, but they had to be thinking the same thing.

"Zero has to, at least, be able to destroy the virus in his own mind and systems. So can One. The issue is whether or not he can do it through a link."

"Or is it something that the individual has to do on their own." That would mean the infected were still beyond hope. If they were even alive in there at all. One had played possum and Sigma had no trouble puppeting an 'empty body' until One had broken loose and ran to X. How many more mavericks were nothing but hollow shells? "Or if there's anything left to save. We need a maverick, and I'd really love it if we could get a captured one before actual field testing."

"I'm working on it. You know how hard it is to keep them from suiciding." Getting mavericks to study was damn near impossible. Cain had the med records from Sigma and countless others who were probably infected at the time and playing possum, but he'd had no idea that there was something there to look for at the time. They'd been healthy, so these were just general checkups, not in-depth scans. Nowhere near good enough, and Sigma knew the importance of information and was as determined to keep them from getting it as getting good officers.

"The best thing to do is get Zero out there, but he's out of date. You replaced his gear and armor, but the situation and threat profile have changed. Of courser you gave him the data and analyses, but he's still going over it and these new capabilities alter the situation even more. We know why Sigma wants Zero. No, we don't." Never assume. "We know _that_ he wants Zero. He'll find that out, and he'll move, because knowledge is power and he wants us stuck in the dark. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, but now we've got Zero and One."

"Binary!" Cain got the same thing X had. "Was that why you picked it?"

"No, Zero suggested it as the number after Zero, and it was perfect. I realized that part later. It's a good sign that it's the right name, isn't it?"

"I agree. The issue is," back on topic, "we're keeping this as secret as we can, but we need to move before Sigma does. The best time for that is now."

X hesitated. "I don't like it, but Zero'll agree. Yes, he got the message I want him here and he's bringing one. He'll be insistent I stay here with One, though, and I have to agree. Zero will be at risk, and we can't lose both our immune people or both our people with this ability to one trap. Not to mention that I don't like fighting. Going out to get more field experience is a Zero thing, not a me thing." Though they needed to practice fighting together again. "Sigma knows me, he knows I'll want a break from all this right now, and I'm not sure Zero making me seems realistic."

"You're quite hard to make do anything." Let alone semi-needless killing. "And practice would obviously be in the training rooms first. You're right, it's too soon."

Even Cain had to know stuff like that now. They were so out of their depth. "On the physical level… Maybe you could send some trainees with him? They should at least be able to help him get out there if anything goes wrong."

"Wouldn't you want experienced troops?"

"Well, the most experienced we have, at least. He'll consider them trainees. Maybe that will let him link to them. And it's more realistic than me being there. If it weren't for One, Zero would be breathing down our necks about getting the military up to shape this instant, so Sigma will hopefully buy that and not realize that we know how important One is. Unless Zero doing something alerts him somehow. On the mental level, distance matters to One, not so much to Zero. I think for Zero it's more 'look' and for One it's like touch. He had to individually 'feel' each of the reploids in that room and he had no idea what Sigma was until there was contact and it was almost too late. It's like he has to walk up to them and touch them. Short-range, he has to know they're there, he might need sensor input such as visual as well, and it's temporary.

"Zero can't, sadly, find Sigma on the other side of the planet or anything, but he sees me, he knows what I look like, and not seeing others limits the static. Now that he's linked to me he could probably find me again and restore the link from the other side of the planet. I mean, he did it while he was asleep, there was lead in addition to physical distance between us, and he doesn't know where my new quarters are. I think I could also attract his attention if I wanted to, which I wasn't either. Despite this, he found it far too easy."

Cain nodded. "And then he tugged One in with similar factors. One's abilities might have made it easier, his 'tinyness' and the fact Zero knows him less well might have made it harder."

"Not to mention having multiple links at all. One's reaction to being pulled in was utter amazement at someone doing the impossible. He put it down to Zero rocking. We need to know how this works." Preaching to the choir, but it needed to be said.

"Sigma might want to know too." Another train of thought was being loaded up. "Such a powerful ability but almost no processing power assigned to it? Not to mention that it helped him survive infection."

"It's like that Hydra unit. Either Sigma was just trying to build the best copy he could in a limited time with limited resources and duplicated the parts without knowing what they did or he knowingly gave One just enough to do what Sigma wanted him to. We can't count on ignorance, but we might have a secret weapon. We know the immunity was a surprise, why not the reason for it? Sigma might just have wanted Zero to try and figure out why he was immune and keep us from duplicating it." They'd given up on copying X's immunity since hibernation was a factor, but despite Zero's ancient parts he had been built in modern times.

"So he was unhappy he'd destroyed One's personality because he'd wanted to test the virus' ability to convert him into a maverick? Quite possibly." Cain added that to the list of things to look into: he knew better than to trust something like this to human memory and it wasn't X's job to keep track of things like this anymore. Cain was research and X was application now, as much as they both wished he could come back to the lab.

"We've theorized this ability works along similar lines to the virus," or at least X had and Zero had wondered if One were like Sigma during the debriefing session. "We don't have any evidence, though."

"It might just be chance," Cain agreed. "One might have seen what Sigma wanted to do via the link and that was enough warning to resist the virus. Since the mental trauma of experiencing Sigma's madness came at the same time as the virus' attack on his mind, he could easily have assumed it was Sigma's mind doing the attacking. He did say Zero's mental defenses were a different experience: not corrupting, just being overloaded, or that's what I got from his description."

"Rephrasing One's description of how he was hit and then kept dodging in more scientific terms, the virus damaged his core personality programming so he transferred it to a subsystem and kept transferring it to different ones until the virus had checked them all enough times without finding him that Sigma concluded that he must have been deleted. Most reploids have their personalities integrated into all their systems, which means that if they get infected they can't do this. We did that as a safety measure so that if one system went down they'd survive, but with the virus…" they might have to go with the lesser of two evils.

"The ability to detect virus attacks so he has warning to keep his personality out of the virus' grasp until he can delete it. Most reploids theoretically could delete it, it's simply that they usually can't before it makes them decide not to. That sounds like a decent strategy."

"It wouldn't work if Sigma captured the reploid and flooded their systems with enough they couldn't hide, but One said that as well. It's not perfect immunity, much less a cure." But it might save millions of lives and minds.

"No, but Zero would probably go under with that sort of flooding, so it seems it's good enough immunity for jazz. Not what you have, but I'm not Dr. Light and we can't stick every reploid on the planet in tubes for a century when we still need you to help repair the damage left over from the Cataclysm, so it might be the best we can get for now."


	4. Chapter 4

The door had chimed and X let Zero and One in, noting that One still hadn't gotten his armor.

"What's going on?" Zero asked.

"What could you tell from the link?" Data. Now. Cain had a hungry notepad to feed.

"X wanted us down here, but no one was bleeding. I got that and tuned out again since X didn't think there was anything I needed to pay attention to going on over here and we were in the presence of a lot of dangerous weaponry requiring my full attention. If I was supposed to be listening in, it's X's fault for not telling me."

"Tuned out?" X prompted.

"They're your feelings. If you want me to listen, sure, and if you're under attack I need to know, but I'm not a voyeur." Zero looked like he would be offended if this wasn't X, who was certain not to have meant it that way.

"I can't tune things out when I link." One answered X's unspoken question. "Zero can let me decide what I feel through him, though."

"I can?" Did X know this?

"You appear to be doing a lot on the unconscious level," Cain informed him.

"Any ideas on how to get me conscious of it?" Zero leaned against the wall. X never had that habit since walls built before reploids were taken into consideration could often be leaned through. One still stood up straight, which make him look taller than Zero. His age made X feel that he really should be smaller, but then a lot of reploids were taller than X despite his status as the eldest.

"I'm working on it." Cain pointed at Zero. "How would you feel about taking a troupe of promising young hunter scouts on a maverick hunting trip in an hour and under three minutes?"

Zero caught on instantly. "Combination training and looking for officer candidates while field testing what I can do with this against mavericks? Sure. Just let me borrow a welder."

"What on earth do you need a welder for?" Cain just had to ask: X could guess.

"To stick X to One, because otherwise he'll come after me. I'm not leaving One without someone immune and non-squishable, no offense, to keep an eye on him, and X knows better than to drag this kid onto a battlefield." Zero headed towards the operating theater. "I'll get that done quick and then start location scouting. How many am I taking?" Raising his voice as he went into the other room, he continued. "X, I'm serious about this. You stay or I will use that welder. I know where Cain keeps his and I'm sure I can figure out how to use it after watching them use it on me."

"That won't be necessary."

"X, you are not fine with this." Zero was actually getting out the welder.

"You're right, I don't like it, but it's the best thing for everyone. Just don't die again." Or worse, get held down and infected.

"No promises, but I'll try to avoid sticking you with the kid." The welder was put back and Zero returned. "One, remember what I told you about the puppy dog eyes?"

"Like this?"

Awww…

Zero stood next to One and pointed at him. "See this cute little face? He's so little, well, taller than you but who isn't, and helpless and cute. And young, and so on. What would happen if you got yourself killed doing something stupid?"

"I'll cry." One had obviously been coached, but it was still true. "Please don't die, X!"

"I won't," X just had to reassure him.

One brightened instantly. "There you go," Zero told him. "Whenever it feels like he's about to do something stupidly selfless and suicidal, use the eyes. I am counting on X to keep you safe and you to keep X here. Got it?"

"Yes, sir!" A joyful salute.

"Yes," Cain concluded. "We need you training our officers."

Zero knew he was just that good. X knew that was just unfair. Zero was pretty sure that was the idea. All's fair in love and war? Yeah, that. "Where do I go to get this set up? Oh, and I have no access to anything."

"That's fixed. Your new office is 2300." Building sector two, third floor main office. A unit commander's office.

Zero didn't comment. A training command was fine. "Codes and ID there?"

"And a secretary." Zero was now the secretary's problem until he came back with that data or as it.

"Gotcha. On my way." The nod was as close as Zero was going to come to saluting a non-officer. "X, armor should be done soon. Get the kid into it and over to the obstacle course. Grab some guys to help you chase him. He needs to work on running away."

"Yes, sir." X's salute was informal. Before, Zero would have made an issue of that, but he was out the door and X could do what he wanted as long as he did his duty. "Don't worry, One, this will be fun. Humans play games like this. Hide-and-seek, tag," Cops and robbers wasn't something X would bring up.

"Is Zero going to be doing something dangerous?" One was staring at the door Zero had gone through, hoping he would come back through it. "He doesn't think I should worry but I think he is."

"Doing something dangerous or worrying? Probably both. Worrying about what could do wrong too much is bad, but Zero is very good at worrying just the right amount. That way, you figure out what could go wrong and how to either make sure it doesn't or won't go too wrong. Zero is very good at doing dangerous things." The fact X was naturally truthful made dealing with the link a lot easier. "I'm worried too, you know, because I care about Zero and the people he'll be with. So, I'll do my best make sure that you and I are safe so he doesn't have to worry about us and can focus on keeping himself and the others he's with safe."

"You trust him. But he said he died!" Zero couldn't die! One wanted X to say Zero was kidding very badly, but X couldn't lie to him.

"He did. I was in trouble and it was the only way to save me. So you see? If we stay out of trouble, that won't happen again. So we have to make sure we keep safe." Feeling One's resolution, X smiled in approval and gestured to the door. "Let's start practicing."

"I need to talk to you, One, but later." Either Zero would come back and his report would help Cain figure out which questions to ask One or he wouldn't and One's survival would become even more vital. Better start now. "Do your best. Now get going, I've got baseline scans to run."

Possibly on some of the people Zero would be taking out in case he linked to them: that way Cain would have a very clear before and after to look at. So far, none of the people involved in this could be fully scanned. It would be good to see if links could even be made with Cain's own creations: Sigma was… atypical, and One had only 'touched' the interviewers: no link or detectable difference in them.

"Goodbye." One waved to Dr. Cain

"Goodbye." X did the same.

"See you later." A smile, and they would.

The armor was delivered after X commed Douglass and One was put into it and had to get an info download on how to use it since it was so different from his copy of Zero's. There was a slight problem since the helmet had not been designed with long hair in mind, so X had to steal someone else's helmet and quickly swap the various units between them. Thank goodness for standardization. The new helmet didn't look comfortable, but it fit. One's hair could squeeze out under the edges all around.

The armor lacked Zero's unfortunately placed lights, so One actually looked less feminine than Zero even with the unbound hair. Zero looked like an amazon: One looked like a boy badly in need of a haircut. Arranging the hair, X found that it was incredibly snarled up, quickly abandoned the idea of untangling it then as it would take ages, and added asking Zero how he kept his neat to the priority list. X also needed to figure out where One was going to sleep tonight. And select a reading list for him. X had always loved the idea of bedtime stories.

Apparently anticipatory glee was enough of an unusual emotion for X to feel that it attracted Zero's attention. What? Who was being fiendish? Zero was fiendish, X was enthusiastic. Zero's parting emotion could best be translated into words as, "You keep telling yourself that."

Silly Zero.

One had noticed the exchange but seemed to have categorized it as 'grown-up stuff.' It was really just Zero and X being odd, but let the child keep his illusions.

All too soon, the dominant feeling from Zero was focused intensity, attempts to get his attention gently dismissed with a feeling of, 'Quiet children. Daddy is busy now.' X told one that they should be busy too, and the games of hiding, chasing, and getting to the exit without being caught resumed with the help of the drafted hunters.

All of a sudden Zero went from anticipation to full alert. X didn't want to distract him, but reaching out was automatic. What's going on/what should I do? Orders, sir?

"Be wewwy wewwy quwyet, we'we hunting mavewicks." Zero's voice!

"Zero?" X realized he'd said that aloud when he noticed people looking at him. "It's nothing," he told them, "I just realized something." Internally, he replied to Zero, "Those were definitely words that time! I was right!"

A pause. "Wow, you're right. I just assumed since One could only do emotions… oh, more processor space. It's easier to decode emotions than thoughts and words. But I was just using my internal com, and I coded it to send like that automatically, so you could interpret it a lot easier than regular thoughts. So not mind reading yet, but we can use it to speak. Very cool. Are you recording?"

"Yes. Logging this in the com logs."

"Great. I am getting virus. I am killing it dead. Can't tell where the maverick is, but I know one is here." Zero's focus was mostly on looking. Physically.

"Can you look with this, like at the meeting?"

Zero paused again. "I forgot about that. I've only been looking at you two so I don't see the big empty. Hold on a sec." A slight disengaging, an opening, and suddenly Zero was in full-blown pissed-off-and-killing-the-reason-dead mode.

In the next second, X had two confused hunter trainees dumped into his head to be looked after with varying levels of infection that they hadn't even known was happening. X protected them from the virus while their systems went on red alert purging it. One was detailed to monitoring the other trainees for signs of infection.

One had shut down all unnecessary processes and was just standing there, so X, better at multitasking, pulled out enough to call a halt to training and grab a med cart for One. My, he was seeing Cain a lot today. If only they could spend this much time together outside of emergencies.

Zero switched from kill-the-target to damage control while One was being secured in the card, at which point the child woke up, realized he was being stared at by a whole lot of very concerned people, and blushed like crazy in a very un-Zero-like manner.

Zero was checking the trainees one last time, booting them out of the link, and running performance evaluations that he did not seem to like, along with various tactical.

"Zero?" Report. X was, after all, the closest thing Zero had to a commanding officer right now.

"Found mavericks, or they took the bait. Three of them. One of them was already dead: the virus was controlling the body. The second died in combat. The third… the virus triggered a reactor explosion once I managed to complete personality recovery." Zero had cured them, and then felt them die. "All the trainees are fine: two infections, but you handled those, and I doubt they would have gotten enough virus in their systems for it to take over even without intervention. The mavericks were out to kill, brutally, not infect. Unless we have a leak, Sigma shouldn't be able to figure out this wasn't a normal mission failure. Or… the main virus. General Sigma, the person, is long gone. The virus has his personality data incorporated into it, the useful bits at least." The virus did not consider the desire to save lives that had led Sigma to try to bring Zero in alive useful. "It turns the victim into a killer and then uses Sigma's traits to make them good at it. Whoever programmed this thing needs to die. Painfully."

"So that wasn't Sigma?" What X felt now was half relief that his once-friend wasn't watching from within that shell and half grief. He'd always hoped for a cure.

"No. Just the virus masquerading as him and stealing his smarts, basically." Sick. "As for link capability in this thing, that's screwy. One doesn't think there is any. I'm not so sure. Nothing like linking while I was there, but… I need to think about this. Don't know if there are words. Something's very wrong here, anyway. Remember how Sigma played possum? The virus is still doing that. It should be one hell of a lot more effective than it is."

"Maybe Sigma sent them out with a weakened form of the virus just to mess with us?"

"Weak virus? Weak? Damn it, I wish I could access my own damn tactical databanks! I've encountered this before but I can't get at the memories. I'm pretty sure this is the normal stuff. I'll give you what I got from it. It's that… you know how there are Sigma-traits in this thing? Those bits aren't emoting. The virus itself is. It is holding back, it is waiting, and it is smug. This thing is part of someone's plan, X. If not the opening salvo, then damn close to it. It doesn't feel things itself, no. but it was born of someone's, someone's evil. It's all through the way it does things and the things it does." Zero tried to find words. "This virus could have one hell of a lot higher infection rate. This is hate, and it wants to kill slowly."

X felt sick. "That's…"

"Yeah. You know the AIDS virus that was in that video they made us watch? Although maybe that was just we grunts who never paid attention to human stuff like colds. I remember thinking it was a bit like the maverick virus, since the Sigma virus took Sigma and crippled the hunters, which are sort of our best defense against stuff, and AIDS went after the human immune system and the poor bastard usually died of another disease that moved in while he was weakened? That was a scarily good analogy."

"You're saying that the Sigma virus' only purpose is to destroy our defenses."

"Yeah, and it's not using the capabilities it has to anywhere near their fullest extent. Start waiting for the other shoe to drop, X, and don't think we've seen anything yet. Without the performance blocks, this thing would be at least ten times more infectious, and most of the time it infects someone it doesn't do anything but take out their courage and will to fight before destroying itself and any trace it was ever there. I do not want to see what the sick bastard that programmed this is capable of in the way of an actual finishing blow if the diversion is this good. The other thing is, this should be link capable. It applies a lot of the same principles. One doesn't think it's anything alike, but he's looking at a much smaller picture. Remember at movie nights they'd sometimes show old stuff with ideas about robots and laugh at it? There were these part-human guys in space that absorbed people?"

"The Borg? A group mind?"

"It's making them fit. Like puzzle pieces? Put them together and they'll stay. Anyway, what happens if suddenly there's someone looking out of the eyes of every single maverick, giving them commands and they have instant unblockable communication while we can be jammed? And they're spreading a super virus?"

They were doomed.

"Yeah. I think… Sigma-Sigma, the main virus, is aware of this, is the… memory of the virus. Like bees and a queen bee? You know the issues with thought encryption? Mavericks all use the same code. If I can crack it and find the next Sigma, I might be able to find out everything that's going on. Of course, there's a lot of ifs in there."

"A lot."

"This will not win, X. I will not let it." Comfort: it felt for a moment as though X was being held. "Whoa, I just cracked some of your sensory data coding. Also, it looks like we got lucky somewhere along the line."

"What is it, Zero?" Hope?

"I'm sort of analyzing this as I think at you, and I'm looking at the virus' code right now. Well, the codes of about seven versions. Lots of variation between them, and I think it's planned. All but #2 have a bit that the virus keeps trying to access but there's nothing there but junk data and the process gets aborted. #2 doesn't have that section. I don't think it has that process at all. It and #7 are specialized subtypes that get created later in the infection process, I think."

"You have _samples!"_

"Oh, yeah. You don't? You're the science guys. Really, none? Damn, I wanted to compare notes. I knew you couldn't get the mavericks into the lab, but the virus gets spread all over everywhere they go."

"The virus self-destructs along with the maverick."

X could feel Zero doing the equivalent of eyeing the virus, poking it. "These don't seem to be, but I've got them in a subsystem they think's a normal reploid's main processor. Put them there to see them try to go to work, but it looks like it was a good idea, huh."

"You've got the virus in your systems?"

"Yeah. Don't worry, I won't go back to base until I delete all of it. I've got their coding recorded anyway, I'll give that to you."

"You're not on base?"

Feeling X's response to this information, Zero hurriedly reported that he was, "Heading back now, and they're destroyed."

"Good." They would be having words later. "Head straight for the lab. We need those copies of the virus' program code."

"Uh, X? It's not a computer program. These are nanites."

Silence.

"X?"

"Lab, please. Please hurry." X tried to wall off the link to think and realized he had gone to the lab on autopilot and been standing there with Cain trying to get his attention for awhile now. "Zero accidently treated the link like the com and we can talk now. The virus is nanites, not a computer program spreading via transmission. He has molecular maps of several of the nanites involved. Seven. He thinks this virus is just to soften us up for the real one. It could be creating a group mind, but it's not."

"Nanites?"

"Nanites."

"That is not possible. No one alive has any idea how to contain a program in nanites. Reploids do this automatically, of course, but every reploid's method is so different that one reploid's nanites can't interact at all with another's systems. It shouldn't be possible for a nanites-spread virus to work! You're sure he didn't just find the nanites the program-virus made his systems produce?"

"He was studying them in a quarantined subsystem, so he can give us the data and we'll see, but he was amazed we didn't know it was nanites already."

"Nanites. No wonder nothing blocked it. No wonder we never found anything. We were looking in the wrong place this entire time."


	5. Chapter 5

"Zero said it worked on similar principles to the link and emotions were easier to decode than words or thoughts. The internal com unit! For security," in order to prevent a transmission-virus using the com to spread, "we use nanites to do the equivalent of pressing buttons on it. This would explain One's range issues. He has to produce nanites and have them travel to the other person and back to feel them?"

"What's the lag like?" Cain asked X.

"What lag?" Zero finally managed to arrive. "Hello, all. One looks really confused. Ah, science. And why is he wearing a purple helmet? Give me a download receptor so I can give you my data."

"Lag on the link." Cain tried to remember who had used it last. "If it's nanites, nanites are microscopic. How do they travel the distance? If it's light speed, it has to be a transmission."

"There is no lag." Zero was searching the shelves for the receptor.

"Impossible. Only teleportation is faster than light, and we have shields up!"

"I'm telling you, there is no lag. Physical location makes no difference unless you're trying to get a link set up."

"Teleportation." X's face was uncharacteristically glum. "Nanites and teleportation. We use them constantly and we have no clue how they work. Cain, while you're looking for a therapist, could you find a physicist and a molecular chemist too?"

"There is time involved, but it takes only the time to do things that it takes your processor to think of doing them."

"Zero, you just informed us someone is trying to destroy the world, or something along those lines, and we have no clue how any of it works, or how to stop it, and we have utterly failed our children. You're X's friend, a wonderful person, and I know you're just trying to help us figure this out, but please take a bit of a break from it so we can recover."

"Hey X, now you know how we feel when you act like a saint!" Grinning, Zero waved at them. "Cool down, guys."

"Zero, no one since Dr. Light has had any idea how nanites work." This was not the time. Time. Oh no. "Hate. Destruction. Turning good reploids into evil ones."

"Dr. Wily." Cain got it. No one else did.

"Dr. Light's nemesis. The guy Megaman fought all those times?" X prompted.

Zero's face showed that he got it now. One's was still blank. X bumped getting him a history download up a bit on the priority list. "He was a madman who wanted to take over the world, and reprogrammed robots to make them help him do it. No one knows much about right before the Cataclysm, but he was in Dr. Light's time and a good enough scientist that Megaman only barely managed to defeat him. He got out of jail, faked his death… Wily's probably an alias, but it's a good description of him."

"Vengeance. Destroying Dr. Light's hopes from beyond the grave as painfully as possible. Damn it. I really wanted to kill the bastard."

"It fits what you felt from the virus?" X's emotional pain finally burnt through Zero's block on link input for X's privacy and X felt Zero try to warm him as well as One.

"Yeah. To a T. Downloader?" Zero reminded Cain, who had utterly forgotten and paged a tech to bring one.

One, meanwhile, was feeling very useless and alone since he wasn't able to help them figure things out. X had appreciated his attempts to make him feel better but they hadn't worked. That was what allowed Zero to pull X out of it, pointing out how it made the kid feel. X was so very sorry.

"Don't worry." One was so very sure. "You and Zero will save everybody again." A child's trust in his parents. How many of X's children had already been lost? It hit X like a knife, and One was as deeply cut.

"X, stop it." Zero pulled One away just a bit. "One, X is thinking this is all his fault because of various things, none of which actually are his fault. He'll snap out of it eventually."

"Since X is too nice to say it," Dr. Cain was not amused, "I will have to be the one to remind you of your own epic guilt-tripping over those you killed on that rampage."

"Touche." Zero's attempt to smile for One's sake faded. "X, it's not your fault Dr. Light built you or Dr. Wily was a bastard."

"But I did help people build all those reploids, like you and Sigma, without fully understanding the process." That, X was responsible for.

"X, even I know that much history. Post-Cataclysm cleanup? Radioactivity, chemicals, bioweapons, ecosystem on the verge of changing into something that humans could no longer exist in? Think of all the people, reploid and human, who are only alive because you took that risk." Zero did actually physically hold him now. X felt Zero start to shift, about to deepen the link between them.

Then Zero stiffened. "What the hell is a Regicide Protocol?" It certainly didn't sound nice.

"Why are you asking me?"

"Not you, X, Cain. He installed my OS."

"I've never used the word regicide for anything. You have been activating a lot of your old systems lately: do you think this is dangerous?"

"If it activates, yeah. I just don't know what will trigger it. I got a warning that I was about to set it off." Zero stepped away from X carefully and reduced the intensity of the link. "Speaking of old systems, I've used the 'emergency activation' option to unlock as much of this as mine are going to let me. Everything else is secured and I can't access it while running your OS."

"Are you suggesting reactivating your old OS?" Intriguing, but doubtful.

"I link to X and One. You turn this off and turn on my old OS. It finds it has weird links and starts to analyze them, unlocking and booting up the programs I need. You reactivate me, and voila."

"The old you was homicidal."

"So tie me down."

"Hydra unit."

Zero hesitated. "Can you take it off and put it back on afterwards?"

"The strand endpoints are throughout your entire head. I could take it off, unless anything you need for this is in there, which would render the whole exercise pointless."

"Decapitate Zero? How could he access anything without his head?" X was lost: now he knew how Zero and One felt when he and Cain discussed science.

"My main processor is actually where a human's heart would be. Weird, huh? No, that'd be fine, Cain. Talking, though?"

"If you were capable of it..." Cain thought quickly. "Your designer made the Hydra quite difficult to disable. I suppose I could disable power to the whole head and hook your face up to a separate supply."

"Wait, the Hydra is your hair? Then what are we going to do about One's?"

The non sequiter sent their gazes to X, then to One's… not so much hair as tangle.

"That was the first clue the Hydra was there. See, Zero? That's what normal hair would be like if you treated it like you do yours." Cain seemed to feel vindicated.

"Wow." Zero was seriously amazed. "That might be an even better weapon than the Hydra. One, be careful with that or you'll strangle yourself. Yeah, haircut." Realizing what he had just said, Zero rounded on Cain. "No no no, not me, him!"

"Better make sure the barber doesn't get you by accident." Cain felt that he was old, he was allowed to make weird jokes. "Don't worry, no one's going to take away your precious."

Damn right, Zero's expression stated clearly. "We'd better get started, then."

"X, you'd better perform the procedure. I'd like to minimize possible leaks." It had been a long time since X had operated.

"I'll be your hands." X had no idea what the procedure was for this now. So long: too long.

Zero was secured, power supplies fiddled with, control unit hooked to a disabler to first allow the old OS to restore itself without the new one blocking it and then shut it down to put Zero back in control. One stayed out of the way physically and supported emotionally.

"Ready, Zero?" X wanted to be sure he was.

Zero hesitated. This was a big thing for him to ask to have done. His old self had killed all those people, left Zero to bear all that guilt. X could feel his uncertainty, tinged with vindictiveness. His old OS had done all that harm, and Zero wanted to get some good out of the damn thing. X was proud of that, of Zero being willing to explore that aspect of himself. Zero shrugged off X's pride. "Ready."

Dr. Cain pressed the key and as Zero faded the link broke.

Zero hour.

X had seen footage, from security cameras that were soon smashed and Hunters that were soon killed, of the old Zero. That had been an animal. This was not. Cain did not seem that surprised. "So being inactive did allow you to debug."

"Telling him I'm not a person, that he isn't stealing my body. Just like the virus he fights. Ironic." And pleasing on some level to this strange reploid with Zero's face but cold eyes that were just the opposite of One's.

"It was only a possibility." Still, Cain clearly felt guilty.

"And by the time I would have been able to have my life back he was vital." Contempt there, as Cain was dismissed and that gaze swung to X, contempt changing to irritation. "Wherever he is, he's smirking at me. I hate that smirk."

"Who is smirking at you?" X was genuinely curious. No wonder this person was so angry, had eyes like that, after being trapped for so long. "And what's your name?"

"He had many names. I'll call him Break. As for me, it never got finalized. They mostly ended in an a, or well, Genesis. I wonder if the male voice was a mistake. In any case," now One was the object of Genesis' attention, and for him there was some warmth. "Welcome to the family, One." Now there was a smile, on a face that didn't look used to it despite being Zero's. Still, it was genuine.

"Hello." One didn't know how to react to this new person.

"I would link to you, but I think the fratricide there would shut me off if I did." The tilt of Genesis' head indicated Cain, the tone of his voice told One that he was sorry he couldn't say hello to him properly.

"You can have at least some time. We all owe it to you." X bowed his head. This wasn't the killer. X had wanted to know his family for so long: he couldn't deny another the chance to know his.

"Hmm." That gaze returned to One, and it was clear a link was opened. One smiled brilliantly and Genesis' smile deepened.

Then Genesis was out of his restraints and holding One before X knew what was happening, that long blond hair cutting everything away like knives through butter. "Oh, Cain? One strand type's a power cable."

X slid into position between him and Cain, ready to try to get One out of reach of those deadly filaments if there was only some way to do it without risking both their lives. Genesis did nothing, though, besides cradle One, who leaned against him as trustfully as with X. "Don't worry, he won't hurt me," One told them calmly, happily, and closed his eyes. Genesis regarded him intently, seemingly focused on some task. What was he doing?

"My first true child," he said finally, almost thinking aloud. His tone was abstracted, his words not the true subject of his attention. "Damn that fool Sigma. I almost had my body back and then he hits me over the head and delivers me to Dr. Jekyll."

"Your body… back? The virus?" What?

Genesis heard X, but thought One far more worthy of his attention. The only response was a couple of strands wafting in his direction as though a breeze moved them. An obvious threat: what were all those strand types capable of? "I wasn't planning on having children now," Genesis continued once X shut up, "not until much later, but you are certainly welcome." He sighed, touching One's matted hair. "Arrogant, know-it-all, always right: precognition should be outlawed." After saying this he kissed One's forehead while One's hair unraveled itself. "Such a sweet child. Too much like someone who is far too much like someone else." Now his eyes drifted to X the irritating one for a moment before returning to the One he regarded with affection. Then something irritated him and he snorted. "Idiot forgot I'm a reploid. Regicide indeed. Getting senile in his old age. More senile." The Regicide Protocol Zero had mentioned? Had One asked Genesis about it? "Oh, don't worry. I've seen what parents splitting up does to children. None of that for my baby. I don't want you to turn into another Break." Hell no. One must have asked something else: Genesis had to think for a moment before replying, "I'm not sure what would happen if we merged. I don't think much of him, or anything, would survive." Zero and Genesis merging meant Zero would be… no!

Genesis ignored X's wordless protest, though the hairs shifted more obviously to remind X that Genesis had weapons pointed at him and would use them if X annoyed him one more time. To One, though, Genesis showed only kindness, kissing his forehead again as their hair twined together slightly. "I truly have no idea. There aren't any good reasons not to." Pulling back, Genesis nodded at a point One made. "I suppose so. I'll think about it. Are you really sure you want tie-dye armor? Alright, then." Getting nanites through a teleport shield was worrying enough. Replacing One's jury-rigged armor instantly with something clearly designed for him (in the same fingerpaintlike colors as the shirt X had loaned him) was a little more worrying. If he could do armor, he could do weapons. Not to mention how had he gotten it made this fast? This wasn't just a repaint: this armor was clearly much lighter than Zero's and the opalescent surfaces hinted at invisibility and/or shield capability. "Enjoy your gifts, but you'll have to not remember some of this until we meet again."

One's eyes opened and began to function again: he'd clearly done the same thing as when Zero had called on him in battle: let his body go unattended so he could focus on something more important. "I don't mind. You really should tell them, though. You know X is very kind."

"That's the problem, actually." Kids, that expression said clearly. "You'll understand when you're older." It was so impossible to imagine the person that looked at One like that killing all those people. But then, Zero and One shared the same face and were different people. The Irregular had been Genesis… or had that been Genesis as a maverick? An insane maverick? No wonder there had been all those deaths!

One just nodded, accepting that instead of protesting. Then Genesis gave One one last hug. When his eyes turned to X and Cain, then X could see him as a killer. Just not killing with the glee the Irregular/maverick had. Genesis would destroy anything in his way, those eyes proclaimed. And X and Cain had better get out of his way. His words were flat, their warning. "Zero dying is his own problem, but if One breaks a hair on his head you will be held responsible. I will not release those programs: they are mine, not Zero's."

X opened his mouth and Genesis raised a hand to silence him. "Don't you dare say One will be in danger if I won't give you want you want and go back to my prison tamely. I've taken care of his safety and the rest of you can get buggy for all I care."

"Won't you please let Zero come back? Now that we know you're there," a glance at Cain: there would be words about that, "We could work on getting you two your own bodies, or find some way for both of you to be able to live your lives." X didn't want to lose Zero. Surely Genesis could understand that, since he cared so much about One.

It seemed he did, but he only smiled. "It's not that simple, I'm afraid. We are two personalities but one entity. I really should just merge us, but my personality would overwhelm that weakling and One would be sad if I did that."

One nodded as Genesis looked down at him, but he wasn't afraid at all. "Thank you."

"It's only a minor irritation. Your happiness is far more important." Looking back at X, he continued. "I can get myself my own body much easier without you ignorant mad doctors messing it up, thank you. The issue is what happens next. Oh, tell Zero I got rid of the Regicide Protocol for him, along with a few other surprises."

"You can get yourself your own body?" Oh? X didn't even know if that was possible.

Genesis smirked. At a mental comment from One, he laughed. "No, this isn't how my brother smirked. His was 'I am smarter than you and know something, or a lot, that you don't, and my, your ignorance is cute.' Mine is superiority flavored by evil. He was actually a very nice person, to family at least." Now that he turned back to the others present, that evil reappeared. "But you're not family and you're Zero's friends, not mine. But One considers you family." Another peck on the child's forehead. "So we shall see. I will warn you again. Zero is Zero's problem, his test. One? Touch him and die. See you later." One last squeeze, loathe to leave the child, and the eyes went blank: no one home.

"Good bye," One said sadly, but helped keep the body upright and looked at the adults for help: he wanted Zero back now.


	6. Chapter 6

"Reactivate Zero's OS?" That was X's suggestion, did Cain have another idea?

"I think we have to. I can only scan him via that OS, and we need information right now. Thank goodness we already got Zero to upload the information he collected on the virus. I sent it to just about everyone with enough clearance, and they'll remove the classified stuff and send it on." Cain's fingers flew, resetting the equipment. "Care to place any bets on what the scans will show?"

X focused on hooking the important piece of equipment up to Zero, who snapped back into awareness when Cain finally activated it. "What? Oh no." He quickly realized his body was loose. "How many people died?"

"None." X put a hand on his shoulder, meeting his eyes. "We're all fine." They really were. Really? Zero's eyes asked the question, Zero hesitating to restore the link. Really. How to explain this? "While Cain's OS was running, your old one managed to debug. When he woke up, he was annoyed he hadn't been reactivated earlier, but he decided not to overwhelm your personality and said he'd get his own body. He also made some alterations to your systems, including deleting the Regicide Protocol, whatever that was."

Zero's initial reaction could be summed up by the long-lost acronym WTF, although none of those present would have known WTF those letters meant. Still, questions later: self-check now. "That's not all he got rid of. My nanites count is down eighty-five percent. I've got the systems I managed to get control over, a few other emergency-activated things, and nothing else. None of the secured stuff and only my own databanks."

"He said they were his systems, not yours. Not to mention that he doesn't like me at all, is willing to semi-tolerate X only for One's sake, and seems to feel that if you get yourself killed that's an easy solution to the debate over whether he should reabsorb you or not." Working with X, Cain had ended up having to tell people the bad news and pessimistic perspective by default. "Scanners. Now."

"Do you want me to go after Zero?" Hearing One's voice, Zero seemed to register the way he was holding him and how non-macho it was. Helping One stand up on his own two feet, he checked him over.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" Blinking, Zero noticed something else. "I brushed your hair? And why are you wearing mother-of-pearl armor?"

"No, Genesis-you didn't hurt me." Just the opposite, One's cheerful voice proclaimed.

"His hair just untangled itself." That had been an odd sight. "And Genesis said he had done something so One wouldn't be in danger. Gifts?"

"He was very irritated I had been so badly built. He's going to do something to Sigma-virus because of that and because he hurt me." Said something would clearly be nasty and One looked forward to it. "So he fixed it. Look! I can move my hair now, see?" One clearly found this to be one of the coolest things ever.

"Genesis is going to go after Sigma?" Okay, that Zero was angry about. "Moron! If he gets his ass kicked, or even if he escapes, he'll give away capabilities that I don't even have anymore! Why is he screwing me over like this? We need that data and I need _my_ systems!"

"Rant later, scanner now." Cain pointed at it.

"Sure, sure." Grumbling, Zero put himself into it.

Good lab rat. That settled, Cain looked at One. "He also said he would make you forget some of what you talked about?"

"Yes. I don't remember what it was, but I remember I thought he was being silly about it. He went to go think and see what happens in case that helps him decide." Still waving his hair, One looked pensive. "He doesn't have anyone he likes but me, but he doesn't hate anyone at all, he just doesn't-like. He really doesn't-like you, Dr. Cain. Or Sigma, Sigma-virus, and someone I can't remember. Most other people are just things that are there. He's not sure about X and Zero, and that's making him remember sad things and hurt."

"Was the person you don't remember Break?" Seeing people as things? How horrible. Though One described it not as tools but scenery. Still, you couldn't be friends with things. How very sad.

"Oh, no. He was confused about Break like he is about you. He's dead and you're reminding him of him. Break was… he said it was really confusing and he thought it drove him batty." Weird.

"I want a psychologist, curse it. Are we talking about a sociopath?"

"He's not evil!" One protested Dr. Cain's worries ferverantly, then paused. "Um, he's not very nice, though. Unless he likes you. So I said he should stop being silly and like X." One nodded firmly. "Then X can show him how to like everybody." Remembering something, One made sure to tell them about it. "Um, if you hurt someone he likes, he will really not-like you. He gets rid of things he doesn't-like. He would have gotten rid of you, only I like you and he likes things people he likes like. If he hurt someone he liked, I think he would not-like himself. So he's deciding about that."

"About Dr. Cain?" X's metaphorical blood ran cold.

"No, about you and Zero. If he decides about you, X, then he'll decide about Dr. Cain. For now, he's just not getting rid of him until he decides about you. He is going to get rid of Sigma-virus though."

"You mean he kills people he doesn't like."

"Or gets rid of the things he doesn't like and keeps everything else. That would be better. So I said he should talk to you, X, and then he would see that the doesn't-like things weren't really there. That just leaves the like things. He's not evil, or even mean! He just is being silly. He doesn't know better, and it's the person I forget's fault." One defended Genesis' goodness with absolute conviction. "He just wants to keep the people he likes safe and happy. All we need to do is show him that there are lots of people to like."

Dr. Cain didn't know if that was possible, even for a reploid. X hoped it was.

"I'm not the only person he's ever liked," One told them. "He liked Break, even though there was stuff that he didn't like that wasn't really there. Only they had a fight because of the stuff Genesis did because of being silly and Break died. So he's messed up because of that and he really doesn't want to do that again with you, X." One was also very afraid of that: even without a link his fear showed in his voice and downcast eyes. "If that happens again he might get rid of himself. So please don't fight!"

"I won't if I can possibly avoid it." That was all X could promise at this point.

Scan complete, Zero emerged. "What did I miss?"

"Rather a lot." Seriously understating the case, Dr. Cain pulled up the scan results. "It's not just nanites. He teleported out several of your mysterious bits of hardware."

Zero quickly ran additional internal diagnostics. It hadn't even occurred to him that was a possibility. "I am _how_ much lighter? I have _how_ much empty space? Oh hell, my hair!" Zero grabbed his ponytail and pulled it in front of his eyes frantically. "Phew. They're still there, even if they're not hooked up to anything. I thought I'd gone 71 percent bald."

"In other words, the ones we figured out how to use still work?" If that was the case it would fit. "It seems to me," Dr. Cain mused. "That he's letting you keep what you earned. A test?" The question was directed at One, as was the thinking aloud: of course X would have picked up on this.

"Yes. He's going to wait and see and then decide."

"One, could you please get in the scanner now? I'll help you." X led One away to get that taken care of. Now that they knew Zero hopefully wasn't in danger he wanted to make sure One was fine.

"It would take me weeks of practice to adjust to this weight and center of balance change. Can we put in some ballast or something?" At Zero's level of skill, absolute precision was required. He could fight well enough despite the alterations that someone of lesser skill wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but against Sigma, the slightest dulling of Zero's edge could be fatal. Then interest started to dawn, overshadowing the worry. "Or could we put in some shiny new systems that I can actually use?"

"Start thinking about that, Zero, but on the back burner. I'll work on ballast, since we need that now. Draw up something with Douglass and bring it to me when I have the time. Installing hardware into any reploid, let alone you, has difficulties you won't find in armor." Dr. Cain ordered that train of thought to delay departure to leave the tracks clear for more urgent cargo. "Alright. So it looks like we're not going to be able to pull out any more rabbits now that Genesis has taken back his hat. What can we do with what we have?"

"A lot," Zero assured him. "I wanted to see if I could get access to the programs that were designed to analyze this stuff, but what I've already jury-rigged should be workable. I got you virus data and I'm working on decoding maverick thought encryption. You guys do what you can to help on that. And now there's less mysterious junk in me, that ups the odds of figuring out which bit does this and analyzing it, right? Oh, and did Genesis disable the security cameras? I want to get a look at him, and I don't know about therapists but we do have profilers working on Sigma, or we did, that you could grab to try to get him figured out if they're still alive."

"We have footage, and most of that was outsourced from the beginning, so they're mostly fine."

"Look on the bright side. He's going after Sigma, and I seriously doubt that if he knows even more than I do about the virus that it'll be able to take him. So he kills Sigma, Sigma kills him, or they kill each other. This could be a good thing."

"Stop imitating… No, X would not see deaths as something to be optimistic about. Still, I do not appreciate being humored."

"Okay. Realistically? This is bad. There is nothing worse than someone with no hesitation whatsoever to kill for what they consider a good cause. We do not need two Sigmas. From what One said, thought, his first priority is taking Sigma down. He has virus data, he can analyze it a lot better than us: if he told One he could do it he would have meant it. Can't lie over a link, and they were linked, right?"

"Right."

"So it's entirely possible that he knows a way to permanently stop Sigma and whatever comes next. I just hope we can put the pieces together."

"He said something about how he was fighting for control of his body until Sigma knocked him out when he'd almost won." Now that was a bombshell.

When it impacted at ground Zero, Zero's fist hit Cain's wall. "Damn it! What does he know? Everything was right there, in my own damn databanks, and he ran off with it and left us to babysit!" Thankfully the wall had been built with much worse abuse than a punch, even Zero's punch, in mind.

Dr. Cain was probably the most informed person on the planet about reploid psychology, sadly. Thank goodness he'd succeeded in breaking the news to Zero in the right way. They couldn't afford to have Zero guilt trip right now. As long as he stayed in problem-killing mode, the knowledge that he had infected Sigma was only causing anger at Genesis for not telling them things they needed to know. Hopefully when it finally got through to him he would be angry enough at Genesis to consider Sigma's infection his fault, not Zero's. Zero hadn't even been installed yet.

One entity or not, they were two very different people. Zero didn't deserve to bear the burden of either murders or infections that he had not done.

The noise of the punch attracted X's attention, and he stuck his head through the doorway. "What's going on?"

"X, you look… frazzled." Zero's mind being blown by this was perfect timing: what Cain had said would have some time to sink in.

"How do the scan results look?" X hadn't uploaded anything yet.

"Like a chunk of solid alloy. My anti-scan defenses we can partially beat, Zero we can use your OS for and that's helped you learn how to partially beat his defenses too, but whatever anti-scan system Genesis put in One has been upgraded. Nothing works. I'm not even sure the alloy I'm reading isn't just a surface coating, since Zero uses a different and better one."

"Oh. My."

"Going out-of-body and cloaks of invisibility. What's next, crystal balls?" Zero was sick of this.

"He did imply Break had precognition," Cain couldn't resist adding.

"Then why didn't he foresee his death?" At least they could rule that impossibility out.

"Actually, he did," One corrected him. "Or he caused it, at least."

"Genesis didn't kill him?" X's head pulled back into the room he and One were in to bring him to the main area.

"He set a trap with an explosion and they both died, only Genesis came back and Break didn't. Genesis wasn't even trying to kill him, really." It was very sad. One followed X into the room. "Do you want me to do something else now?"

"Do you think Genesis can beat Sigma?" That was what Zero wanted One to tell him. That and "How?"

"He said I wouldn't have to worry about Sigma-virus, that he wouldn't hurt me ever again." He'd said so, so One was sure. "He'll do it, he won't lose to Sigma-virus. Um." One tried to think. "There was… stuff I don't remember. But he can kill the virus, not just the Sigma body."

The virus. "So Genesis thinks he can take Sigma, the main virus, out before Sigma could try to go after One." In other words, very damn quick. How would he find Sigma to do that?

"How did he feel, or look?" X remembered One's descriptions of himself and Zero: that might be helpful and Zero looked like he had thinking to do before asking anything else.

"Just like Zero." Of course.

"He's hiding?"

"No, like Zero afterwards. He is Zero, really. Only, um…" One pouted, utterly frustrated. "I need a bigger vocabulary! There have to be better words for this!" Tapping his foot, he glared at imaginary Sigma. "I'm lucky I even know that children are supposed to talk differently from adults. Only I'm probably not doing a very good job." He was sorry!

"So that explains it!" Laughing, Cain told him, "You've got the gist of it, you just sound a little artificial. I'll get you a dictionary and encyclopedia and so on, and you can do some studying later."

"Thank you!"

"I have the downloader here." Picking it up off the table, Zero waved it at them.

"I'll upload mine," X offered. "And then you can get what I've accumulated."

Yay!

"Aspects. That's what I wanted." One announced this after all this was done and he had a chance to look through some things. "Same being, but they can act like different people, only not totally since they're the same underneath. Oh, Genesis is probably listening through Zero. He certainly could, and he said he would be keeping track of what happened to help him decide. That's probably the easiest way."

Zero slammed his head down into his palm. "I am such an idiot. I should have thought of that!"

"It's also," One continued, "Since Zero likes X, and Genesis is Zero, Genesis likes X. Only Genesis… I'll look to see if there's a word. In the words I had installed, you would probably say it like this: Genesis sees X as a probable opponent and wants him out of the way. Zero feels that too, of course."

"I do not!"

"Remember when you told me not to sleep naked like X? You're a little worried about him interfering with raising me. But, you like him, and trust him, so he's an ally instead of an enemy. Genesis, though, sees the risk as a bigger thing than the like. Before either of you met X, there was only the risk, so Genesis wanted to keep X from becoming a threat. Now, though, he knows you could be an ally, and I hope a friend, and he's trying to figure out if the like is worth taking that risk." One frowned, considering those words. "I didn't use those words to explain it before because they're not very good ones. I'll try to try to think of a better way to put it."

"You're doing a good job," X told him.

One smiled. "I'm not, but you are really, really nice. Oh! That's another thing. Zero was all alone except that you managed to become his friend. Genesis never had anyone do that: he tried to be friends with Break but that didn't work. So X is the only person Zero likes and I'm the only one Genesis likes, but because you're the same person you both also like the one the other person likes. Or maybe I should say loves instead of likes, since Zero likes Dr. Cain and liked Sigma-virus when he was pretending to be Sigma, who must have been very nice. Oh, if you want to like-like X now, you can, because Genesis got rid of the Regicide thing."

While X and Zero tried to puzzle that out (yeah, Sigma hadn't given One a lot of information on relationships), Dr. Cain asked, "What was the Regicide Protocol?" Cain seemed to be focusing on something besides Genesis' psych profile. X picked up on this and wondered what it was.

One shrugged. "Genesis just thought it was really stupid and got rid of it. It was, um… supposed to make sure Genesis did what he was supposed to and look after his family. I think. I'm not sure, though."

"It set off the kind of warning bells I normally get only when I'm staring down the barrel of a buster. Regicide means killing the king, right?"

"One," Dr. Cain seemed to be very cautious now. "Who do you like?"

"Um." One clearly hadn't exactly thought about that. "I love X, and Zero who is Genesis. You're nice and Douglass is cool, so I really like you. I like all the people who played with me, except Tower who tripped me and laughed. He was supposed to try to stop me, so I don't mind the tripping, but laughing was mean. He apologized when X made him, though, and he meant it, so I'll have to see about him. Sigma-virus is evil and I want him destroyed. I don't really know anyone else well enough to decide, although I think I would like a lot of the people Zero was helping fight the virus in the link."

Cain smiled, touched. "I hope Genesis listens to you. You're reminding me a lot of X, although he never used baby talk."

"X is really smart." One nodded. "I hope Genesis listens to me and figures that out. Then after Sigma-virus is gone X can play with you more and everyone won't be so sad all the time. I want X and Zero to get married, and Genesis not to merge with Zero because that way I get three daddies. Everyone needs to listen to me."


	7. Chapter 7

"Get…. Married?" What on earth? X had ruled out that interpretation of One's confusing explanation of everyone's feelings toward each other because it just wasn't…

"Yes! Because Genesis wants a big family, and a stable environment is really good for children, with parents who love each other and them. So then you'd be a really big help instead of an enemy and you'd be friends. He thought what he'd have to do was just be alone with us, because if there were other people we'd be hurt like he was. But that would mean we couldn't play with you." That was wrong and sad. "Even he said that was silly, but he was really hurt. Break killed him and he was really lonely and then Sigma and then you. He kept being hurt and trapped and alone in the cold and empty without anyone because of people who should have helped." One's arms and hair wrapped around himself as he shivered, reliving the memory they had shared.

When the recollection ended, his resolve was strengthened. "So don't you dare be stupid and think he's an enemy because if you decide that he'll be your enemy right back. He'll kill you and then he might commit suicide, or try to. So don't. He's this close to deciding Break was right all along, so he's very fragile right now. I don't want to lose all of you. He's not evil. He was just hurt, and he doesn't want anyone else to be hurt like that again, but it's not possible to make sure of that without giving up a lot of wonderful things, and he knows that now. But if he thinks he'll be killed again or you'll hurt me…" One shivered. "Then he might do evil things."

Looking at One, seeing how miserable he was at the thought, X wished he could establish a link. What he could do, however, was take One into his physical arms. "Don't worry. I won't let that happen."

One's links worked the same as Zero's now, easy as breathing instead of straining untried systems. Still, the touch was only brief: it took only a moment for One to know that X meant it, X loved him, and would do his best. He trusted X, so X's best was sure to make everything turn out okay, just like with Sigma.

Now that One was fine, X turned to Dr. Cain and Zero. "Have either of you sent anything about Genesis or his existence out to anyone yet?"

No, not yet, and Cain was clearly upset at himself for the oversight.

"Don't." It was rare for X to order instead of request. "Dr. Cain, I know that as a scientist you feel something this important needs to be known, but Genesis is a person just like you or me. You made the right choice about this before, and I'm alive because of it." Instead of taken apart in an attempt to produce the vitally needed workforce faster that would have made it impossible to ever develop reploids: Dr. Light had made sure that anyone who killed his son would not be able to do the same thing to others. "Zero, I know you've never trusted yourself, but don't you think now is a good time to start? Take precautions so that the data will be sent out if anything happens. That will make you feel better and this is very important. Right now, though, Genesis isn't the only one who needs to give others a chance. Let's also wait and see. One trusted me to save him from Sigma and I did. Let's trust his judgment again."

"The enemy of our enemy is our friend?" Zero was paranoid as always, but X's argument was getting through.

"That too, but the friend of our friend should be our friend as well."

"I told him he should talk to you." One's eyes still were teary, and X wiped those tears away. "You're a wonderful person, X. I'm so glad I reached out to you."

'I'm glad too." X sighed. "You being taller than me is jarring. I want to tuck your head under my chin, but it turns out the other way around."

One managed to arrange himself so that would work, and X smiled as he did so. Then One linked to him again so X could hold him in his heart as well. "Mmm." Hair wrapping around X, One snuggled for all he was worth.

Focused on the child, X didn't remember Zero was there until he regretted that he wasn't in the link. Looking at his expression, X realized, "I'm making you jealous, aren't I? I'm so sorry. Come over here and help me hold him."

"He's not jealous of you, he's jealous of me," One corrected X smugly, sticking his tongue out at Zero for a second. Little… well, not little, but he was still an imp.

"You little… are you trying to set us up?" Zero laughed. "I really shouldn't, though. If I linked to X, I'll know whatever he's… Okay, X doesn't do secret plots, but still. I'm a spy, even if I don't want to be." He glanced at Cain, who looked up from what he was doing after a second and did something that half nod and half shrug. Yes, Zero was, but it wasn't a problem at the moment.

"That's okay. I want him to know that I meant what I said about giving him a chance. Not to mention, Zero, I want you to know how serious I am about this. Don't you dare try anything stupid like locking yourself up somewhere or listing Genesis as a maverick." X beckoned Zero over.

"If he was infected, he technically was one." Grumbling, Zero looked at the walls, avoiding X's gaze.

"He's himself now." The warmth of the child in his arms assured X of that. "One knew Sigma was evil. He knows Genesis is not."

"He's the same as you. So very hot and it burns him too because he has no one to warm it with. Dim because he has no one he could guide. Strong because he had to be to survive being alone in the dark for so very long. Betrayed." X felt One's sadness. "Of course you don't like each other. You both hate yourself." Reaching out to Zero, One gently tugged.

"I don't want to intrude," and it was clear Cain felt like an intruder, that X his son/brother/partner had not only left his lab behind but him, not just a new home but a new family, "but how long was Genesis alone for? When he was brought in, he'd been constructed starting about a day ago according to all the tests we ran on network stability, joint examination, and so on, despite the fact that all his parts were ancient. He was found," or the first bodies were, "about a half-hour after startup."

Instantly X put the pieces together: he'd been helping Cain examine Irregulars to figure out who had built them and what had gone wrong so charges could be pressed against factory owners whose attempts to save money by cutting corners had caused innocent people to go mad. X might not know military strategy very well, but engineering puzzles he knew like the back of his hand. Actually, the back of his hand _was_ an engineering puzzle.

In the instant after that, Zero joined the link, partly to figure out why X was freaking out.

"No, not just a few hours. So very, very long." One's eyes opened. "Oh. So the first cruel person, the one I don't remember, was Dr. Wily. So Break was the person called Protoman?"

"According to legend, they had a way of backing up robots in the instant they were destroyed and could build new bodies for them. We can't do that now." Something else that had been lost. "So Protoman killed Genesis and for some reason Genesis wasn't rebuilt until after there were other reploids?"

"He wanted to hide the facts that he was built by Dr. Wily and one of the world's greatest heroes committed suicide to take him out." Zero realized then that this meant _he_ had been built by Dr. Wily. X watched him, worried about what would happen when this sunk in.

"Um, Protoman wasn't his name. His name was," One whistled a few notes that somehow conveyed so much more than any word could. "But he was called a lot of things. He pretended to be someone named Break for a bit. It was complicated."

"Dr. Wily built Genesis, Genesis took out Protoman and then was revived when there were reploids around to infect with the virus. Genesis must be the one supposed to carry out the rest of the plan. And I asked you to wake him up." Strategize now. Be catatonic with guilt later. "Who else did he take out? According to the legends, Protoman only got involved when there was something Megaman wasn't doing, or couldn't."

One shook his head. "I don't know. But enough that, um, Break, felt he had to kill him even though they agreed about a lot of stuff. Break had been really, really hurt too. But he decided not to do what Genesis was. They would have been friends, but Break had people to protect." He blinked. "I'm remembering a bit more now, just pieces at a time. He said a lot. He really needed someone to listen."

"It must be terrible to remember what the virus made him do," X sympathized.

"No. He wasn't controlled by it. It's a tool to him." A horrible tool. "He didn't mean Sigma, that was a mistake. He was… alone in the dark. He wasn't trying to fight the virus to get his body back, just recover because he'd been going mad. He was acting on reflex to get rid of enemies, but when he woke up a little to fight him because the autopilot couldn't beat him he realized Sigma wasn't an enemy and tried to stop acting on autopilot."

"It was odd that the system problems he had could happen so fast." Dr. Cain should have caught that.

"He didn't want to kill Sigma, so he was fighting with himself, and then Sigma hit him while he wasn't moving and all the things that drove Genesis mad were in the virus that he sort of… made on reflex to defend himself because he'd been knocked out. It was to make Sigma not kill but protect him, but linking is mostly to talk and he was screaming then." One shivered. "He was broken, so linking with Sigma broke Sigma."

"So linking is like the virus." Zero tried to withdraw then, but both One and X refused to allow that.

"The virus was, was wrong!" No, this wasn't the same thing, how could Zero say that? One was horrified.

"Dr. Cain, where are the sedatives?" X watched Zero carefully, One practically hogtying Zero's mind to X's at X's request.

"Still in cabinet red five." Zero was hard to read, but Cain was trying. "X…" He's on the verge of a mental breakdown, and I do not want you to end up like Sigma.

"One, go get these ones please." They could send images now? Wonderful.

The idea of sedatives actually calmed Zero down. "Wow, you're actually being practical. Knock me out, destroy the Hydra… Oh god, I'm going to miss my hair…" He let himself slump into X's arms.

"We're not knocking you out. We need your head, and it's too nice hair to just throw away. I'm going to give you something to make sure you stay calm, stay linked to you to help you heal, and get you through this." X's voice was calm: soothing, but this was not optional.

"X…"

"Zero, I will knock you out if it even looks like anyone will be hurt. Or One will, since I'm going to have him watch for any signs as he'd be better at finding them."

"This isn't anything," One told them, giving X what he wanted. "You're just hurting, you're not going to break. You're very strong, it took so much more than this to break Genesis."

X administered the sedative in any case and kept the knockout handy.

"X, this is not a good idea. You're going to have to do something about this, and if I'm in the link he'll know not just the plan but that you're going to oppose him, and then… He's got to want to destroy the last of Dr. Light's creations." Zero was so very afraid for him, enough to even push aside the crushing guilt and self-hate.

"I can't let people die, but One still thinks it's possible to prevent that. So I'm not going to give up hope." X shook his head. "Dr. Light's message said… I'm not going to give up. Not on anyone. If he's you, then he's a good person. Just misguided, and, well, Dr. Wily." X shrugged. "If he thought that… It's not good to see people as obstacles,, as things. You have to care about everyone, even the ones you have to fight. Especially them, to be sure you're making the right decision. Sometimes, you have to choose to kill someone, like we've killed mavericks. It's just you have to try to make the right choice. Make sure there really is no alternative."

"Are you seriously comparing him killing Protoman and god only knows who else to people killing suspected mavericks without verifying it first?" God. "The Cataclysm."

Okay, blaming that on Genesis was going a little overboard.

"Um, actually…" One's voice was small. "He really didn't want me to remember that, because if you knew you wouldn't give him a chance and if you didn't give him one he wouldn't have given you one even though I love you. And, um, no, it was actually pretty easy. The hard part was hacking through all the things Break had put in place so that the humans couldn't set off the nukes and other things themselves."

Billions of people. X couldn't hold back a single tear at the thought of all those people, and seeing that Zero instantly decided that Genesis was fucking dead. One cried out in protest, "No! Don't!"

If Genesis could reabsorb Zero's personality… X held on to Zero as tightly as he could. No. No. I won't lose you. No. Please, no!

"X…" Dr. Cain really felt he needed to send this out, and that Zero should be sedated. What if Genesis took Zero's body as well as his personality?

"No." X answered. "No." He smiled now. "Zero is still Zero." Genesis hadn't taken him away.

"He'll regret that," Zero told X, struggling now to escape the link and X's grasp. "I have to…" I have to protect you. "I'm not going to let you end up like the rest of your family."

"I'm not," X assured him. "Think about it."

"The… me being this determined not to let you die means he won't kill you? You think that's how it works?"

One nodded.

"He still killed billions of people!"

"He was killed for it, and I think the statute of limitations has run out. I don't think you can be prosecuted for the same crime twice, and that probably would have been death penalty." Dr. Cain's attempts to prosecute manufacturers of Irregulars, not to mention establish reploid rights in the first place, meant he knew quite a bit about law. Enough to play devil's advocate, even though he was far more aware of the horrors of the Cataclysm than even X. Cain had grown up in a world without reploids to protect humans from having to deal with the worst of it.

Zero had never gotten the legal stuff. Or anything else technical besides combat techniques.

"Zero," X told him, "You're still the same person. We just know… but think how much you've done to protect me. Trained me, died for me. I do trust you." X sighed. "We really do need a therapist. If the wars do end, I should perhaps look into that as well as getting back my medical credentials. They lapsed because I wasn't keeping current."

"I'm sorry," Zero said. X had started having trouble with that during training, and since he'd been handling things during Zero's death…

"Hopefully I'll be able to 'play' in the lab again." X shrugged, smiling at Cain. "We'll just have to wait and see."

Zero looked at Cain and his face displayed an 'oh shit' moment. "If this is the virus, then.."

"Zero," X facepalmed. "I'm immune to the virus. This is not the maverick virus. Nobody is going to kill Dr. Cain. Stop being so paranoid."

Zero looked at him. "I'm not sure about the whole us feeling the same thing thing. I like the old guy, and One said Genesis was pissed off about him installing, well, me."

"Um, not angry, just he wasn't happy about it." One shook his head. "He's not evil. He thought that all people were like the Doctors. Um, Light and Wily I mean, not Cossack. He kind of liked him from what Break said about him, but it was kind of a war, so… Oh. He killed Kalinka. That was why Break decided to stop trying to convince him."

"Well, Wily was a bastard and would have said stuff about Light, so that I get." Still, Zero didn't approve.

"Um, that wasn't exactly it. Dr. Wily was a nice person at the start, and that's actually why he went mad, to try to help the robot masters. Dr. Light used to be… not very nice, but he changed after he saw what him being that way had done to his best friend. But Break was hurt before then, so…" Long story. One shook his head. "Dr. Cossack and Kalinka were nice. Dr. Cossack was killed when the citadel was attacked, along with the robots he'd built. Break had made sure Kalinka wouldn't be there, but she ran away from where he put her and went to back to try to get the backups of her brothers so they could be brought back. Genesis was using the computers there to hack things in Russia and he killed her. The backups had already been destroyed. He asked Break why he hadn't stopped her when he must have known she would go and that it would be pointless suicide, but Break said that she'd known that too and would rather die than abandon the brothers she loved without at least trying to save them and since he loved her he had to let her do what she had to." So very sad. "So he felt he had to kill his brother even though he didn't want to. It doesn't quite make sense, but I wouldn't want to be broken enough to think like Break did."

Oh. "He was younger than me even when he did that," One realized. "He killed Dr. Wily when he was awakened, then there was fighting, then he hacked things, then he had a really long battle with Break before the trap. He was alive for less than three days before being killed the first time."

"Fast worker," Zero murmured.

X bowed his head. So very young, so very sad.

"He didn't really talk to anyone but Break. He just… got them out of his way." One shook his head. "Break he couldn't manage to kill because he kept dodging and running away, so they talked. And stuff. Break had… I don't know how it worked, but he could link even though no nanites. He was so very old and sad. Seeing him just made Genesis more determined, really, even though Break was trying to convince him not to do it. Break was Wily's reason too. Neither of them wanted what had happened to Break to happen to more children."

Did they want to know? Of course, what was all this but terrible truths?

X felt so very sorry for him: his empathy didn't require a link. "Temporary insanity." That was the defense used for repaired Irregulars. The defense Zero didn't believe in because he felt responsible for everything regardless of whether or not he had any power over it.

"You're really wonderful, X," One told him.

"Too damn saintly," was Zero's opinion.

"I love you both, and I trust you," he told them. "So I see no reason to give up hope."

X was the father of the reploid race in however metaphorical a sense, but now he maybe understood how Dr. Light hopefully had felt about him. He wanted One to be happy. He saw in him the future X hoped for. He would do his best for that hope, that future, that happiness. He kissed One's forehead briefly.

Zero was indeed jealous, then embarrassed when he felt X feel that. "I…"

"Don't worry. I do love you, Zero, you know that. I don't know if it's as my best friend, besides Cain, or not. I do want to find out."

"I don't know either. Let's wait and see?"

X nodded.

One sighed. "I hope everyone makes up their minds soon." He didn't like the possibility that his parents might be hurt or killed, his family torn apart.

"I hope so too," X agreed.

Cain's message tone rang. "I had that turned off," he swore, calling up the message. "I did have that turned off. It appears he's still a very good hacker."

"What does it say?" Zero was too drained by the sedative to run over there.

"He says, 'I've 'gotten rid of' the virus, One. As for the rest of it, feel free to let people know about me: it's not like they can catch me if I don't let them. Zero's the one who should worry, but he can take care of his own problems. As for our mutual-half-brother, X, they usually called him Blues. Protoman was what Light at first and then the media called him. He was a saint too, but the martyr kind. Don't you dare make excuses for me. I made my choices. But then, Blues went to a lot of trouble to make sure I understood that I had free will and could always change my mind. Did you know that Rock, Megaman to the media, was the one who made Blues finally decide that destroying humanity was wrong instead of just impractical? Zero is right, you really don't get how much of a hero you are. One, I still need to think, and telling me I'm guilttripping isn't going to help anymore than it does when X says that to Zero. I do love you, and I will be watching over you. Not through Zero, though. If I wanted a soap opera, I'd hack a TV station. I don't know about coming there. I need to think. Spending a few years wandering the globe incognito did wonders for Blues, after all. But I'll keep better track than he did. I've got enough duplicates running around, and I've got dibs on the 'evil twin' position. I'll keep in touch so you know I'm not dead. Take care.' That's the message, and he signed it Reploid DWN 0000 – Genesis."

"I'm Reploid DLN 0001," X told them, blinking. "Or, that's what my design is designated as. A redesign would have another number, although Dr. Cain and I never really bothered with assigning numbers because we did so many design adjustments…"

"Dr. Light's Number One Reploid." Cain smiled. "Megaman was Robot Master # 001, apparently."

"So Blues would have been 000?" One smiled. "So that's why Zero is named Zero! And I've got X's number!" He really liked that.

"Zero's design and X's number." Dr. Cain was so amused. "You know, back in the pre-Cataclysm days, people would get married if there was a child on the way so it wouldn't be a bastard, which used to be the word for a child whose parents weren't married. Nowadays with the population so low no one cares about that sort of thing. Can you believe people would actually decide not to have perfectly healthy children?" With all the radiation, chemical, and biological damage that the Cataclysm's survivors had, that was inconceivable since so many were incapable of conceiving. Abortions were for babies too unhealthy to live. And there were a lot of them. Before the virus, humans unable to have their own children or qualify for the extremely exclusive pool of those eligible to be considered to have an orphan placed in their care had been eager to adopt newbuilt reploids to fill the void.

X couldn't understand not wanting a child either. Of course, One was an extraordinary child. "Well, we can file for adoption jointly in any case. As hunters, though, we're in such a high-risk job that we're not eligible right now, but with the virus gone…"

Adoption? Really?

Of course.

One began to do a happy dance to the tune of, "I'm going to have three daddies, I'm going to have three daddies…"

Zero and X looked at each other. "Was I this bad?" X asked.

"Yes," Dr. Cain and Zero said simultaneously.

"Oh, oh, Jinx!" One appeared to have found some time to look at the encyclopedia.

"You just weren't this obvious about it. I think there's some curse that says 'may you one day have a child just like you.'" Dr. Cain ignored One to tell them this.

"Oh, I'm so fucking screwed." Zero facepalmed.

"Zero!" No swearing in front of the child!


End file.
